


Marrow

by thecarlysutra



Series: Homecoming [2]
Category: Thunderheart (1992)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-12
Updated: 2010-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-13 04:27:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/132836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecarlysutra/pseuds/thecarlysutra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SUMMARY: Ray gets complacent. There are complications.<br/>AUTHOR’S NOTES: For Holly, because I love her almost as much as she loves Thunderheart. This is technically a sequel to Homecoming, though it is not required reading.<br/>THANKS: A million thanks to Kita for betaing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Ray Gets a Proper Date, and a Shock to His Sytem

****Crow Horse’s boots echoed on the worn sidewalks. He frowned; he was used to walking silently.

“Can’t believe we drove two hours for that crap,” he said.

Ray shrugged, and rolled another handful of popcorn into his mouth. The popcorn alone was worth the drive.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Dinner and a movie. It’s a nice change of pace from getting felt up in the back of your squad car.”

“You’re getting spoiled,” Crow Horse said. “Still, coulda seen a better movie.”

“Like that kiddie alien movie? I thought Close Encounters was weird.”

“I liked Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

“Hey, Crow Horse? Is that a real thing?”

“The whole archaeologist fighting crime thing? I don’t think so.”

Ray frowned. “Not that. I mean that whole Indian burial ground thing.”

Crow Horse arched an eyebrow. “The hell are you talking about? You’ve seen Lakota cemeteries—”

“I mean . . . forget it.” Ray stuffed a fistful of popcorn in his mouth so he wouldn’t have to finish his thought.

Crow Horse stopped walking. He turned to face Ray, met his eyes.

“What?”

It soon became apparent that Crow Horse was not budging until Ray answered him. Ray swallowed, dryly.

“Is that true, that there are Indian burial grounds that are just plowed under or built over?”

“Well, yeah, Ray. I mean, not always on purpose—the old ones didn’t always mark their burial sites, or sometimes the markers got lost—but it happens.”

“But sometimes on purpose?” Ray asked.

“Yeah. It’s the usual game; who’s got time to care about Indians when there’s _Wasi’chu_ cities to build? You know?”

Ray nodded, thin-lipped. Crow Horse rested his hand on Ray’s shoulder.

“Come on, _kola_. Maybe we got time to fool around in the backseat before we drive back to the rez.”

Ray laughed, and he and Crow Horse walked back to the car, side by side.

***

Crow Horse was dealing with the annual audit from the staties—“That’s why you’re the boss,” Ray said, grinning that grin that made Crow Horse want to kick his teeth in—so Ray took the domestic disturbance at the Iron Cloud residence.

Even above the din of sand pelting the undercarriage of the cruiser, Ray could hear the fight before he could see it. Sound carries in the desert, and on a still day you could hear for miles. They could probably hear the shrill, high woodwind note of Sheila Iron Cloud’s tirade clear on the other side of the mountains.

Ray let the siren hoot a few times as he stopped the car at the edge of the Iron Cloud property. For a moment, there was silence; then the screaming continued with renewed fervor.

Ray walked the long way around the cruiser, keeping the car between him and the Iron Clouds as he surveyed the scene. Sheila was up on the trailer’s porch, Grayson on the ground below. The front yard was littered with men’s clothing. Double XL shirts hung from the sparse shrubs; a pile of size 40 jeans, worn on the inseams, sagged down the porch stairs. Also in evidence: a couple six packs’ worth of PBR cans, empty, at Grayson’s feet; a snub nose revolver—maybe a .38—in Sheila’s hand.

Ray eased his sidearm out of the holster, but kept his gun hand in the shadow of his jacket. He made his way up to the trailer.

“Police!” he said. According to SOP, he was supposed to pull his badge, but there was no point, really. Not in a town this small. “What’s the problem here?”

“The problem,” Grayson said, his words stretched and lazy, but his tone conversational, “is I married a crazy woman.”

“Crazy,” Sheila snarled. “That’s right, I must be crazy, to stay married to a worthless drunk like you for so long!”

“All right,” Ray said. He was shoulder-to-shoulder to Grayson, a few feet away from Sheila on the porch. “All right, Mrs. Iron Cloud. Let’s just calm down. Your neighbors called us; you’re worrying people. Let’s just calm down, and you can hand me that gun, all right?”

Sheila slanted her eyes down to the gun weighing down her hand, regarding it like she had forgotten it was there until Ray said something.

“Listen, lawman,” Sheila said. “I’m not calming down until this lowlife gets the fuck off my property. I have the right to bear arms, and you have the right to get the fuck off my property, too.”

For the most part, the general population of the rez was used to the Washington Redskin. And for the most part, the general population of the rez liked the tribal police much better than they liked the FBI. However, the general population of the rez did not much care for the police in general, even if they were local boys and full-blooded Sioux. This was something Crow Horse had failed to mention three years ago when he had shown up in DC to give Ray his, “hey, hoss, if you’re done barking at the moon here with the feds, I got a job for you” speech.

Ray frowned, and brought his gun out from behind the curtain of his denim jacket. He did not like to begin his shift with his sights trained on someone, but some things were unavoidable.

“Mrs. Iron Cloud, the right to bear arms is subject to individual legislation on the part of the states, including that you drop the goddamn gun when the police tells you to.”

“That’s goddamn right, you crazy bitch,” Grayson said.

Ray glanced briefly at the man, peevish. “Mr. Iron Cloud, I want you to sit down on the lawn and put your hands on your head.”

Grayson sighed but did it. He had enough problems without getting into it with the cops.

“Mrs. Iron Cloud,” Ray said, and began to walk slowly toward her. “Drop the gun, please.”

Sheila’s mouth drew into a thin line. She brought the gun up, pointed it vaguely in Ray’s direction.

Ray stopped his progression toward the trailer. “Mrs. Iron Cloud, put the gun down.”

“You put yours down! You can’t come onto my property and point a gun at me like I’m some common criminal—”

“Mrs. Iron Cloud,” Ray repeated, his tone firm but the timbre low; he spoke in a key for not spooking the horses, “put the gun down.”

“Jesus, Sheila, just do it!” Grayson said. “You can’t be pointin’ no gun at the cops!”

Sheila, flushing with renewed rage, charged toward her husband, a litany of Lakota curses streaming from her mouth. Unfortunately, the trailer stairs were between Sheila and Grayson, and they were covered with Grayson’s clothes. Sheila stepped badly on the pile of jeans covering the stairs, and lost her footing.

There was smoke and thunder as the gun went off. Ray felt a knock to his left shoulder like a hit from a battering ram, and lost his wind. He stumbled.

Sheila more threw the gun away then dropped it. Grayson collected it with one hand, pulled his wife to her feet with the other.

“Jesus, Ray—” Grayson said.

Ray raised his weapon, gun barrel zeroed in on the center of Grayson’s broad chest. He went to steady the butt with his other hand, and found he could not. He shook it off.

“Drop the fucking gun, Grayson.”

Grayson bent down, and set the revolver on the ground. He straightened, put up his hands, and then nudged Sheila until she put hers up, too.

“I told you you shouldn’ta come on my property,” Sheila said.

Grayson cut her off. “Jesus Christ, Sheila, shut up!” He looked at Ray. “Listen, Ray, we’re really sorry—it was an accident—”

Ray creased his brow. Then he followed Grayson’s gaze to his own left shoulder. The pale denim of his jacket was dark with blood. Ray’s hands shook, and he lowered the gun to waist-level.

“I—I still have to take you in,” he said.

Grayson nodded. “Oh, yeah, sure. Here, just let me . . .”

Grayson lowered his hands slowly, studying Ray’s face intently. Ray didn’t say anything. He was feeling a little sick. Grayson put his hands down, and walked over to the bushes in front of the trailer. He selected a t-shirt from the branches, and brought it to Ray.

Ray frowned at it.

“To stop the bleeding,” Grayson said.

The light bulb lit. “Yeah—right. Thanks.”

Ray wrestled his gun into the holster, never a difficult task but arduous now when he couldn’t get his hands to stop shaking. He took the t-shirt and held it to his shoulder, awakening a world of pain. Until then it had just been pressure, mostly numb; all of a sudden, the pain hit him so hard he thought his legs would go out from under him.

“You take Sheila and go and sit on the porch,” Ray said. “I’ll radio someone to come pick you up. You just sit and wait.”

Grayson nodded too quickly. “Yeah, absolutely.”

Grayson shepherded Sheila to the porch. Ray bent to retrieve Sheila’s gun. There was a throbbing rush of blood to his head on the way down, worse on the way back up, and it took him a minute to puzzle through how to pick up the gun and keep the compress on his shoulder, one-handed. When he had figured it out, he stumbled to the cruiser. He set Sheila’s gun in the passenger’s seat and picked up the radio.

“Dispatch, this is Officer Levoi; twenty Iron Cloud residence—”

The radio crackled, cutting him off. “Officer Levoi, what is taking so damn long?”

Crow Horse. Ray did not know whether to be thankful, or annoyed.

“Dispatch, _shooting_ at Iron Cloud residence; officer requests backup—”

Crow Horse didn’t sound nearly so smug now. “Shooting? Ray—”

“Walter, I need backup here ten fucking minutes ago! At least two units, 10-91.”

There was no answer, which Ray assumed meant Crow Horse was running for his bike. Ray glanced briefly at the Iron Clouds; they were still huddled together on the porch, all the fight scared out of them. He moved Sheila’s gun to the driver’s seat, and then lowered himself into the passenger’s seat to wait for Crow Horse.

***

Ray’s wits were far from sharp when he finally heard the familiar rumble of Crow Horse’s bike. Ray’s perception had softened to something blurry and indistinct. The line of the horizon was as puffy and soft as the sparse white clouds, miles above. There was a word for those, that type of cloud; Ray had learned it as a child, but he could not find it now. The only word he could reliably locate was “pain,” a throbbing neon in his frontal lobe. The pain in his left shoulder had dulled, but there was a symmetrical echo of pain in the muscles of the other arm, frozen too long in the position of holding tight the compress. There was a dull, gnawing pain in his stomach, the dehydration pain of a terrible hangover. It was worse than the pain in his arms.

Ray heard Crow Horse roll up, and then a cruiser a moment after, sirens howling, beeping to silence as the officer killed the engine. Ray watched George jog up the Iron Clouds’ lawn to the trailer porch, braids bouncing and cuffs jingling on his belt.

Crow Horse came around to the passenger’s side, canceling Ray’s view of the horizon.

“You son of a bitch,” Crow Horse said. “You should have told me you were hit.”

“She didn’t mean to,” Ray said.

“Yeah,” Crow Horse said. “Cuz that’s what I meant.”

He loomed in the doorway; Ray flinched, the sudden shift in perspective too much. Crow Horse’s sensible, competent hands on his torso, checking the compress, checking the rest of Ray’s body to make sure that was the only place he’d been shot.

Wordlessly, Crow Horse ended his inventory, left the car. He shut the passenger’s side door, shutting Ray in the hotbox all alone. Crow Horse was right outside the door, he knew; they were separated only by a few inches of steel and glass, but still Ray felt suddenly isolated.

His hands were shaking again, worse than before.

Crow Horse handed Sheila’s gun to George as the officer walked by, escorting the cuffed Iron Clouds to his cruiser. Then Walter got in the car, started driving, lights and sirens running.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Walter said.

Ray had not been worried about not being okay, before, but Walter’s words—the simple fact of Walter’s presence—made him feel better, anyway.

***

The clinic waiting room was full; summers off school meant more scraped knees and children falling out of trees. Crow Horse half-supported Ray, and half-dragged him into the doctor’s area in the back.

The doctor was swabbing a little girl’s throat while her mother watched on. He stopped, though, when Walter and Ray burst in, and the woman collected her child to her.

“Sorry, Molly,” Walter said. “Police business.”

Ray wanted to apologize, too, but he was on eight-second delay and they were gone before he could open his mouth. And then Crow Horse was half pushing him against and half lifting him onto the exam table, and Ray felt embarrassed and annoyed but mostly dizzy, so he just let it happen. He felt like there should be more pain; there was pain, in the periphery, but it was far outshouted by this dizziness, his head disconnecting from his body and floating about, and the gut-punch nausea.

He just wanted to close his eyes for a minute.

Crow Horse was barking things at the doctor, but parsing for the individual words seemed like such a chore, so Ray just let the familiar tone and cadence of Walter’s voice wash past his ears, like music from another room.

The nurse slipped scissors in the sleeve of Ray’s jacket. A small tug, the harsh noise of something rending. Ray flinched from the pinpoint of light the doctor shined in his eyes, a single beam of pain boring straight into his skull. The nurse was pulling the disassembled pieces of his jacket away, was cutting off his shirt now. How funny, to see something three-dimensional stripped down into two-dimensional parts. Ray wondered if the jacket had ever been in those same parts before, back in the factory when they were sewn together. Maybe things were destined to devolve back to their simplest forms.

Words still rushed by Ray’s ears instead of settling there, but he understood the shape of the doctor’s mouth. Repeated, exaggerated elongations, telling Crow Horse to get back. Walter stopped at the very edge of the borderlands, arms crossed over his chest, legs shoulder-width apart. Sentinel.

The doctor took Ray by the arm, the good one, and forced the stinger of a syringe into his vein. When he pushed the plunger, it burned all the way up to Ray’s shoulder. It was strangely comforting; now both sides felt the same.

Ray’s eyes found Walter, out in the borderlands. He liked that Walter’s emotions always rose to the surface; even now, when the emotion was fear and not a small amount of anger, it was comforting. Comforting that some things stayed the same, and that some things were just out there, true, without you having to go and find them.

Ray wet his lips, started to tell Crow Horse about this thought, but then the undertow took him.

***

 _The whole world was the unending luminosity of a camera flash. The sun was so bright that Ray could not see the blue of the sky behind it. The pale sand beneath his feet was only a reflection of its brilliance, like standing on a mirror._

Ray turned, a carousel pivot. Nothing but the horizon in every direction. No shadows, not even his own, and no landmarks. Ray tried to guess true north, but his gut told him nothing. So, Ray just picked a direction and started walking. The sand slipped and shifted beneath his feet; Ray’s joints jostled uncomfortably.

He walked for a long time toward the horizon, an optical illusion that was always the same distance away.

Ray’s body begged for water, a fire from his mouth to his stomach. Ray stopped, looked around himself again. Just the horizon in all directions.

There was no other alternative but to walk. Ray took another step forward; there was a hideous cracking noise, and Ray stepped back as though shocked. He squinted at the pale sand but couldn’t see anything but the perfect dunes—untouched by shadows, unmarred by footprints.

Ray knelt, used his fingers to parse through the sand. It burned and abraded, but gave to his touch, falling away in rivers. He had been digging for hours, or days, or minutes, when he felt something foreign, something hard and smooth and cool. Ray squinted down at the sand but could not see the object; he could only see the mirror reflection of the sun, the brightness stinging his eyes.

Ray closed his hands around the object, and drew it against his body, like cradling an egg. He looked down at his palms, at the smooth, cool stone in his hands.

It was a bone. A skull. It was completely white, and smooth. Ray brushed his thumb over the curve where the eye would be, and it was soft like chalk without giving.

A skull. It was small and oddly shaped; Ray could not identify the animal it had been—Cat? Rabbit?—but it was at once familiar and alien.

The bulbous, round head, given mostly to the large eyes. Small, uneven teeth.

A skull.

***

Ray did not remember waking. When his mind finally shifted tracks to the present, he was half sitting up, half being shoved back to the flat of his back by Crow Horse’s no nonsense hands. Ray had one hand, the good one, wrapped around Crow Horse’s straining arm. He could not seem to find the other hand. The clarity of this question brought Ray fully into waking.

“Did they cut it off?” he said. He recognized his voice as though his ears were filled with cotton: he sounded slow, distorted, far away.

Crow Horse stopped struggling with him. “What? Did they cut what off?”

“My arm. Is it gone?”

Crow Horse brought one hand away from Ray, massaged the bridge of his nose. “Nobody cut anything off, _witkó_. The doctor bound it up so you wouldn’t fuck up your stitches.”

Oh. Ray looked down where his arm should have been; there were bandages, a sling.

“Oh,” Ray said.

Crow Horse still had one hand on him, lying over his sternum. Ray brought his good hand up, laid it atop Crow Horse’s. Walter jerked his hand away, mouth narrowing to a fine line.

Ray sighed and leaned back against the terribly uncomfortable exam table. That was going to be an argument later.

“They got the bullet out. They said you’ll be fine,” Walter said. “We should get out of here.”

“How long was I out?” Ray asked.

“They said you could go when you woke up,” Walter said, like he hadn’t heard. “We should go.”

Ray was okay getting up on his own until he actually let his weight settle on his own two feet. Crow Horse caught him before he hit the ground.

“Easy,” he said.

Ray squeezed Crow Horse’s arm with his good hand, and this time Crow Horse let him.

The nurse had ruined Ray’s shirt and jacket, so Crow Horse took off his long-sleeved over shirt. It was too big and Ray couldn’t move his bound arm into the sleeve, so it was more shawl than shirt, but Ray was grateful, and folded the fabric around himself. Ray batted Crow Horse away as he tried to help him into the passenger’s seat of the cruiser, and sunk into the leather sling, warm from the sun’s last gleaming, on his own. Ray had never understood how the sun could be brightest as it was setting. It should be out of energy by then, tired at the end of a long day. But the cruiser’s untinted windows only magnified the sun; the front seat was like a greenhouse, heavy hot and too bright. Ray squeezed his eyes shut against the glare. Everything seemed too bright.

Crow Horse had the keys in the ignition, but had not started the car. Even with his eyes shut, Ray was keenly aware of Walter’s eyes on him.

“You figure out a way to get the car home without turning on the engine?” Ray said. “Is that a Sioux thing I should know?”

“Goddammit, Ray.”

Ray sat in the tension, building like thunder clouds amassing overhead, waiting for the rest of the conversation. But Crow Horse just turned the car on, started the drive home.

Ray let his head fall back against the headrest. Behind his closed eyelids, his eyes broke the blinding golden force of the sun into odd geometries. The cruiser shuddered over the uneven terrain, and the pictures in Ray’s head shifted. The kaleidoscope shapes of the fractured sunlight; flashes of small, uneven teeth, a shape both familiar and alien. Ray flinched.

“You okay?” Crow Horse said.

“Cruiser needs new shocks.”

“Rez needs new roads.”

Ray could not decide if the silence was a gift, or more painful than the alternative. Crow Horse should have been busting his balls. Still, the détente was not his biggest problem at the moment.

The large eyes, taking up at least a third of the skull. No, not eyes; the hollows where the eyes would have been. But the hollows were too large; they were more like goggles, going past the eye space and onto the animal’s face.

“How long was I out?” he said.

In his mind’s eye, Ray was able to replicate perfectly the image of Crow Horse rolling the answer around his mind like a marble inside a balloon. His thin mouth twisting as if the words require practice to form; his dark eyes boring through the windshield with more intensity than necessary.

“Couple hours.”

Ray heard the thunder building behind those words. Though he really wanted to talk, he did the smart thing for once and kept his mouth shut the rest of the ride home.

***

Jimmy was curled up at the foot of the bed. He thumped his tail on the mattress as they entered, but did not get up.

“Jimmy,” Crow Horse said, “git.”

Jimmy stared at Crow Horse for a moment, then turned his gaze to Ray.

“Leave him alone,” Ray said to Crow Horse, and collapsed onto the bed himself.

Jimmy soldier crawled until he was at convenient petting distance, nuzzling his muzzle against Ray’s hip. Ray’s hand fell to the dog’s head, absentmindedly massaging his ears.

“He’s gonna get diseases up there,” Crow Horse said.

“He does not have diseases.”

“Fleas, then.”

Abbott and Costello had “Who’s on First?” Levoi and Crow Horse had “Get the Fucking Dog off the Bed.”

“You’re just jealous,” Ray said.

“Of that old fleabag? He doesn’t even have the right number of legs.”

“But he gets petted whenever he wants.”

“Yeah, all he has to do is stick his face in your crotch. You pet me when I do that, too.”

Ray’s mouth turned, sourly. Crow Horse chuckled his way out of the room.

Ray toed his shoes off, then knocked them to the floor with a small sweep of his leg. Other than this, and the movement necessary to pet Jimmy, he was still, eyes on the ceiling. The lazy, uneven carousel of the ceiling fan—damn thing needed a new motor again—the rain-stained plaster above. Flickers of sun-gold geometries, flickers of a mirror desert and small, uneven teeth.

Ray closed his eyes. He was starting to feel sick again.

With vision closed to him, Ray’s brain focused on his other senses. The comforting, warm pressure of Jimmy’s body against the length of his. Crow Horse moving around the house—serious Indian walk, shit; his boots on the hardwood might as well have been sonar blips.

“I put your medicine in the bathroom,” Crow Horse said. He and his boots stilled beside Ray on the bed.

“I know.”

“Huh. I shouldn’t be teaching you these scouting tips; it’s limiting our conversation.”

“So you’d rather be back teaching me to listen to the wind and bring tobacco to elders?”

“Nah. Much more sporting this way.”

Ray peeked open his eyes to see Crow Horse standing still beside the bed. Sentinel.

“Thanks,” Ray said.

“I couldn’t just let you keep on being such an easy mark—”

“Thanks,” Ray said again.

Crow Horse looked at him, finally.

“Yeah,” he said.

Crow Horse sat down on the bed. Ray and Jimmy—less willingly—scooted over to give him berth. It was easier than Ray had thought to bear his weight on just one arm.

Jimmy on one side, Walter on the other. Ray had been shot a few hours ago, and life was still pretty good. That’s called lucky.

***

 _In the mirror desert again. Ray had the skull in his hands; he was looking into its eyes like looking to the horizon._

A small brown hand curled its fingers around the skull’s rounded crown. Ray’s eyes left the skull; a Lakota girl, maybe twelve or thirteen. Her long, dark hair shone brightly in the mirror world; Ray looked into her eyes like looking to the horizon.

Ray knew what she wanted. He gave her the skull. The girl took it in both hands, gazing into it like it was a Magic 8 Ball.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I didn’t know,” she said. “I just wanted some money.”

“It’ll be okay,” Ray said.

The girl shook her head. “Some things you just lose.”

Ray’s mind woke after his body again. When his mind finally blinked into focus, he was sitting straight up, his whole left side alive with pain. Walter’s hands were on him, holding him still; Walter’s words were around him, not yet crystallizing in his mind but _there_.

Ray focused.

“Whoa, easy there. Easy.”

Ray focused. His eyes found shapes around the room—bedpost, desk, Crow Horse’s discarded boots—and he kept them there until they made sense.

Ray focused, and slowly reality dawned.

“Take it easy—”

“I’m okay,” Ray said, and as he said it, he was.

“Jesus, Ray—”

“I’ve been dreaming,” Ray said.

Crow Horse’s grip on Ray tightened.

“Fitful dreams?”

“I don’t think so,” Ray said.

Crow Horse’s hands left Ray as Crow Horse moved his big body back into the bank of pillows.

“Okay,” he said. The word was a lead weight.

Ray rubbed at the bridge of his nose. His mind felt like one giant bruise.

“They could time these things better.”

“Bad timing, horse shit,” Walter said. “You needed a shock to your system, _kola_. Paying attention now, aren’tcha?”

The thought hit Ray like a gut shot. How much had he missed? How long had he been complacent?

“Yeah,” Ray said. “Yeah, I’m paying attention.”


	2. In Which a Body Dump Reminds Crow Horse of Dinner at his Parents'

When Ray next woke, he woke slowly, and his mind woke at the same pace as his brain. It was a nice change.

The room was bathed in pale morning light; the air was sharp with the smell of coffee. Ray turned over to Walter’s side of the bed and was met with Jimmy’s dark eyes.

“Crow Horse is going to kill you,” Ray said.

Jimmy, used to Crow Horse’s empty threats, closed his eyes and snuggled back down to sleep. Ray frowned, and angled his body up—managing his body’s entire weight with one arm was harder in the morning, though pain and lack of sleep might have had more to do with it than the hour—enough to see the clock.

Shit.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” Ray demanded, pulling his jeans on as best he could while walking to the kitchen. “I’m going to be late.”

Crow Horse didn’t look up from the exacting science of sweetening his coffee.

“Didn’t figure you’d come in today,” Crow Horse said. “I’m pretty sure getting shot earns you a day off.”

“I was off yesterday,” Ray said peevishly. “Most of yesterday.”

“The part of yesterday after you got shot?” Crow Horse asked.

“Shut up.”

“Plus, you got that other thing to work on.”

The words opened a gate through which all of Ray’s righteous anger escaped.

“Oh,” he said softly. “Yeah, I—I forgot about that.”

Crow Horse looked up from his coffee. Ray could feel Crow Horse’s eyes on him physically, taking him by the shoulders and giving him a little shake.

“You better not,” he said. “If you don’t focus on what They’re trying to tell you, you’ll get shot again. Or worse.”

“It was only for a second,” Ray said, but he could feel himself flushing.

“Yeah, right,” Walter said.

He downed his coffee, abandoned the mug on the counter, and started out the door. A burst of frustration popped in Ray’s chest.

“How long are you gonna be pissed at me?”

Ray closed his hand around Crow Horse’s wrist, arresting his motion. For a long moment, Crow Horse was completely still; he stayed mid-egress as though he had been frozen. Finally he turned, pivoting on the anchor of Ray’s hand around his wrist.

“Let go, Ray.”

There was something about Crow Horse that belied common sense. Something that put the fight in Ray even when he knew that the smart response was to leave well enough alone.

Ray tightened his hold on Crow Horse’s arm.

Crow Horse jerked his arm back, but Ray held fast, even as he was pulled to just inches away from Crow Horse, his dark eyes fiery with anger.

“Goddammit, Ray,” Crow Horse said.

And then all of a sudden Crow Horse didn’t look angry anymore, but tired. Ray released his hold on Crow Horse’s wrist, took a step back, hands fanned in surrender.

“Walter, I—”

“God _dammit_ , Ray.”

Crow Horse took Ray by the arm, and pulled him back to where distances were measured in inches and breaths. He held him by the wrist, and he held him by the waist, and he brought Ray’s body against his. Crow Horse held Ray against him, and he kissed him.

“Try not to be so goddamn stupid, huh?”

Who knew how long this moment would last? Ray let his body relax against the comforting physical reality of Walter’s, and he soaked up his warmth, his scent. Walter threaded his fingers through Ray’s hair, held him in place. The touch was rough, but tempered by an undeniable fondness.

“I’ll do my best,” Ray said.

***

Before he went to work, Crow Horse helped Ray out of the sling and into a shirt. It was a testament to their recent conflagration that this was done without Crow Horse making fun of Ray, or Ray telling Crow Horse to go fuck himself.

Ray moved his newly unbound arm carefully. The pain both distorted and pronounced the dimensions of his arm; he felt overly conscious of the anatomy, but his arm felt huge and heavy, not as he remembered it.

“Still attached, there?” Crow Horse said.

“Think I’ll make it,” Ray said.

Apparently, Crow Horse took Ray’s assessment of his health as true. On his way out the door, he took Ray by the lapels, jerked him close, and crushed their mouths together.

Walter peered at Ray over the top of his Raybans.

“Be good,” he said.

Ray shepherded Jimmy into the truck, the growl of Crow Horse’s bike still echoing down the long, desert road.

“Buckle up,” Ray said.

Jimmy just blinked at him, and then continued his vigil for jackrabbits, blunt snout poking out the crack in the window.

When he had first come to the Badlands, Ray didn’t have a car with a radio. He had been used to silent stakeouts, but for some reason was needled driving the endless, barren reservation roads with no sound but the sand pummeling the undercarriage and the desert winds assaulting the windows.

Ray could not pinpoint the progression, but in the past three years, he had gone from despising the silence to cherishing it. The hum of the motor and the sounds of the desert interacting with his car became white noise that facilitated meditative thought or pleasant mindlessness.

Usually. Today, on the long road to Grampa Reaches’, the blank canvas of Ray’s driving mind was only a convenient projection screen for vision replays. Trying to outrun the images, Ray sped, something he never did outside police business, no matter what Crow Horse and his Indian radar had to say. Fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five, seventy. Seventy-five. Under Ray’s heavy foot, the truck ate miles, but the reservation roads stretched on endlessly.

Once they’d arrived, Ray opened the door and let Jimmy run up to Grampa Reaches’ trailer. Ray followed at a more reasonable pace, extra careful in his footing. Walter had made him take the painkillers the doctor had prescribed, and they made Ray feel slightly detached from himself.

Plus, apparently he needed a little help paying attention, in general.

Grampa had just come to the door to let Jimmy in when Ray came up on the porch.

“Thought you’d be earlier,” Grampa said, holding the door for Ray.

That he used English without being asked led Ray to believe that Grampa knew exactly why he was there. He was annoyed, but grateful.

“Sorry,” Ray said, following Grampa into the TV area. “Took me a little longer than usual to get going this morning. I brought you some breakfast.”

Grampa nodded, and sank into the threadbare couch with the imitation Egg McMuffin. Ray took the chair opposite him. He glanced at the television, the twenty-inch full-color that he had given the old man when he moved to the rez. It had been his in DC, but he had realized, when he was packing up his life, that he had never really watched the damn thing. No time, what with most of his life spent undercover somewhere. Besides, it had been his fault, sort of, that the old one had been broken. It had been a gift, not a trade.

Grampa was watching some game show Ray didn’t recognize. Not that it mattered; the sound was off. It was usually off, and Ray wondered, in light of his own recent brainspace intrusions, if the flickering light of the silent television was just a canvas for Grampa’s visions.

“They tell me they took the Iron Clouds to jail,” Grampa said.

“Yeah,” Ray said. “We’re not gonna hold them, though. Maybe use the threat of conviction to get them into counseling, which they need anyway. Grampa, I had a vision. I don’t understand it; I need help.”

“They already told you everything you need.”

“Grampa, please.”

Grampa ruminated over his sandwich for a while. Ray had never been good at waiting, but he was getting better, and suffered in silence until the old man was done eating and ready to talk.

“They tell me there’s a man, can change bones into silver. He breaks open the land, and he—” Grampa frowned. He spread his hands in a dish, like he was hoping the right word would fly from them like a magician’s dove. “— _pakóta_.”

Ray frowned. “I don’t know that word.”

“This thing, it is hard to say in the _Wasi’chu_ language. It’s like _ok’é_ —”

Ray flipped through his mental dictionary. “Um, dig? No—uh, _mine_? He’s mining for something?”

Grampa nodded. “He is looking for something in the land.”

“I don’t supposed They told you what he’s looking for,” Ray said.

Grampa nodded at the television. “They told you everything you need. Now that girl, I think she should take the showcase. She does not know how to gamble.”

***

Ray came home to find the radio in the kitchen crackling and crying.

“Officer Levoi? Hello?”

Ray picked up the handset. “This is Levoi, but I’m 10-10, Terry.”

“Ray! Ray, I’ve been calling you forever. Look, you need to get up to the butte off Spotted Elk—”

“Terry, I’m 10-10. Crow Horse told me to take the day off.”

“Yeah, I know, but now he wants you on scene. The butte—”

“Off Spotted Elk, yeah. Okay.” Ray frowned. “Hey, Terry, do you know what this is about?”

“I just know he took a call, and then called here for me to call you. Oh, and you need to get your ass in gear. He said that, not me.”

“Yeah, I figured. Thanks, Terry. I’m 76.”

***

En route, Ray tried Crow Horse’s radio, but got nothing. He sighed and just followed along blindly, a frequent unfortunate side effect of being in Walter’s life.

There were two cruisers on scene when Ray got there. He frowned; if he counted himself, that made half the squad there.

He quickly understood why; the uncomplicated geography of the butte left little room for concealment. Ray saw the body right away.

“Shit,” he said.

Crow Horse, kneeling beside the corpse, looked up as Ray approached.

“’bout gave up on you comin’,” he said.

Ray knelt beside Crow Horse. “I was at Grampa’s, working on that other thing.”

Crow Horse nodded, the long brim of his hat elongating the gesture.

When she saw Ray walking up, Officer Danielle Red Shirt bounded up from circling for casings, her ponytail bouncing. She knelt beside the boys, beside the body. In another setting, the three of them could have been seated around a table, having drinks.

“Hey, Ray!” she said. “You okay? I heard what happened at the Iron Clouds’.”

“I’m fine, Danny. How ’bout you? This your first DB?”

The line of Danny’s jaw tautened. “No! No, I had that guy at Crow Creek last winter.”

Ray tried to remember specifics.

“Hypothermia?” he asked, searching Crow Horse’s face for clues.

“Yeah, unless you wanna blame the alcohol. Had enough in him, I’m sure he felt warm all the way home.”

“And I had that stabbing at The Singing Sisters!” Danny added.

“Thirty witnesses, plus the guy confessed before we even got on scene,” Crow Horse said, causing Danny to frown again.

“Oh,” Ray said, with utter sincerity. “Then this is old hat for you. Wanna introduce me?”

“Deceased is Arthur Long Jacket, fifty-five—”

“I don’t recognize him,” Ray said.

“Nah,” Crow Horse said. “He’s probably before your time. He used to live in the main village; we’d pick him up for nickel and dime shit all the time. D and D, disturbing the peace, minor substances charges. He was always a pain in the ass, but a few years ago he went nutty and hauled outta here. He may’ve still been living on the rez—there’s a lot of empty land he coulda holed up in—but not where anyone’s seen much of him.”

Ray frowned. “Until now.” He took a pen from his pocket, gently manipulated the fabric of Long Jacket’s shirt to get a better angle on the bullet hole. “Find any casings, Danny?”

“No. But judging from the damage, I’d say we’re looking for a larger pistol round, maybe a .45?”

Ray nodded. “Good work.”

Danny beamed. Crow Horse rolled his eyes.

“Who called it in?” Ray asked.

“I did,” Danny said. “I mean—I found it.”

“Out in the open like this?”

“Yep. I was doing my rounds this morning, and I saw him from the road. The killer didn’t do a very good job of covering up.”

“Except you didn’t find any casings,” Ray said.

“Or any tracks,” Walter said. “Sumbitch wiped the place down.”

“Sounds like we’re looking for an out of towner,” Ray said.

“A killer tourist,” Crow Horse said. “See the Badlands, dump a dead body; you really can do it all in South Dakota!”

“Maybe they’ll start printing that in the brochures,” Ray said.

***

Crow Horse walked Ray to his car.

“Sorry to call you in, but—”

“Jurisdiction,” Ray said. “Yeah, I know. I’ll give Rapid City a call.”

“Tell ’em I don’t want no so-called ‘special agents’ mucking up my works. The _Wasi’chu_ courts can have the guy once we’ve caught him; I don’t care about that. Not my show. But I don’t need them in here getting in the way of my policing. That’s why I got a fed liaison on the payroll.”

“At severely reduced pay,” Ray said.

Crow Horse rolled his eyes. “Take it up with the tribal council, hoss. I got nothin’ to do with funds. What’d Grampa say?”

Ray leaned against the car. The metal skeleton burned into his own ribs and spine, even through his shirt. There was something comforting in the sensation.

“Nothing I could make sense of. His advice usually takes a while to set in.”

Crow Horse nodded. “Keep at it.”

“Yeah.”

Ray started to get into the car. Crow Horse stopped him, setting a hand on Ray’s shoulder.

“Dinner at my parents’ tonight.”

Ray raised his brow. “A body dump reminds you of dinner at your parents’?”

“Nah. They called me this morning. This was pre-body, so I told them it’d be fine.”

“Okay,” Ray said, finally getting into the car. “I just hope they didn’t call us in for another baby talk.”

Crow Horse grinned. “Cold feet?”

Ray slammed the door. “It’s not me I’m worried about. You can’t even stand the dog. You’d probably keep our kids in cages.”

Crow Horse flipped him off. Ray drove off laughing.

***

Jimmy ran ahead of them, crashing through the screen door before Walter and Ray had even left the car.

When the men finally made the house, they found Jimmy beneath the kitchen table, gnawing happily on a marrowbone. They also found Sarah Crow Horse, rinsing paintbrushes beneath the tap. The kitchen was full of heat and the smell of lasagna baking.

“You’re bad as Ray,” Walter said, drawing his mother close in a one-armed hug. “Spoiling that damn dog.”

“Language,” she said, and kissed his cheek. “He’s a sweet boy, and he needs you. Quit picking on him.”

“Jimmy, or Ray?” Crow Horse asked.

Sarah eased the frown from Ray’s face, kissing him, too.

“Raymond,” she said. “Don’t listen to him.”

“Yeah,” Crow Horse said. “Why start now?” He pulled his face out of the fridge to regard his mother. “Ma, you want a soda?”

She shook her head. Crow Horse removed two Cokes from the refrigerator, handed one to Ray. Ray, not thinking, reached for it with his bad arm, and flinched.

Sarah never took her eyes from her fingers working the pigment from the bristles, the color polluting the water.

“Raymond,” she said, “what happened to your arm?”

Ray took much longer than necessary to swallow his soda. How did moms do that? His mother had the same eerie power, the ability to know instantly the thing he was trying hardest to hide.

“Nothing, Ma,” he said finally. “Just a little work injury.”

She gave him a long look, but only said, “Nothing serious?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You boys are careful out there, aren’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Crow Horse and Ray answered simultaneously, and then shot each other annoyed, fidgety looks.

“ _How are your lessons coming?_ ” she asked Ray in Lakota.

“Uh . . . _pretty . . . not good_.”

“I don’t know,” Crow Horse said. “He can understand what I’m saying, but can’t say anything back. I like it.”

Ray’s immediate reaction was to flip Crow Horse off. Luckily, he remembered where they were in time, and instead just glowered.

“Don’t feel bad,” Sarah said. “Learning new things is hard. You’ll get it.”

“Hopefully before I’m an elder,” Ray said, frowning into the frosty mouth of his Coke.

“ _Keep studying_ ,” she said. “ _It will come_.”

Ray sank into a chair at the table. Jimmy crowded at his feet. Ray’s chair was perhaps eighteen inches from the oven; he was separated less by space than by the wall of heat. It was strangely comfortable, and Ray sank into his chair and let himself become drowsy and detached.

 _“Don’t feel bad,” Mrs. Crow Horse said to Ray on their first meeting. “It’s not that we have something against your kind. We would be just as upset if Walter was running around with some white_ woman _.”_

Ray started to explain that he wasn’t a homosexual, then realized that was a tough sell when your audience was the parents of the man you were sleeping with. Instead, Walter had Grampa Reaches talk to his parents about Ray’s Sioux blood, and that calmed things down. The only sticking point was the lack of full-blood Oglala grandchildren in the future. This had changed in the past few months, when Mrs. Crow Horse had started researching adoption, and something called surrogacy, which Ray had never even heard of. To both men’s horror, this was an endeavor Mrs. Crow Horse shared with Ray’s mother.

“No, I think it’s great that you and Mrs. Crow Horse are bonding,” Ray said during one of the top five most uncomfortable phone calls of his life. “But couldn’t you try quilting or golf or something?”

Crow Horse nudged Ray with the toe of his boot. Ray blinked up at him.

“Sorry. What?”

“Don’t mind him, Ma,” Crow Horse said. “Ray’s been having some trouble focusing lately.”

Ray frowned at Crow Horse.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think I’m being overworked. My boss is a real tyrant.”

“Boys,” Sarah chastised, but she was smiling. “I was asking after your mother, Raymond.”

“Oh. She’s good.” He slanted a glance at Mrs. Crow Horse. “You two haven’t spoken recently?”

Sarah laughed. “Checking up on us?”

Ray blushed, and hid his face under the pretext of investigating the tiny print of his Coke bottle.

“And your stepfather?” Sarah asked.

Ray shrugged. He watched bubbles rise to the surface of his soda, and pop.

“Good,” he said finally. “I hear he’s good.”

Crow Horse’s boots on the tile, his hand weighing on Ray’s shoulder. Ray did not know what upset his father—stepfather—most: Ray’s leaving his solid career track in DC; his doing it to go live on an Indian reservation in Nowhere, South Dakota; or his current living arrangements. Originally, Ray had just figured that he’d hit the Parental Disappointment Trifecta, and that the old man just needed a little time to adjust.

Three years later, Ray was beginning to think that some people just weren’t meant to have a father.

Jimmy pricked up his ears. A moment later, Ray heard the distinctive rattle of Mr. Crow Horse’s 1962 Ford F-100 crawling up to the house. Crow Horse’s hand on Ray’s shoulder, squeezing gently.

Mr. Crow Horse had maybe forty pounds on Walter, but Ray, simply by listening to the soft tattoo of their boots across the kitchen floor, could not tell them apart.

Ray’s weight settled heavily on his frame, and for a moment, he just stayed still in his kitchen chair, at the mouth of the oven. He could hear Walter and his father clasping hands, greeting each other in Lakota. Ray held on for a few moments—“ _How have you been?_ ” “ _Better than your truck. Sounds like she still needs a new fuel pump._ ” “ _Still running, isn’t she? Safer than that stupid motorcycle._ ”—before he lost the trail. Ray dropped his eyes, but they were met by Jimmy’s. Ray swore the dog’s look was purposefully reproachful. Ray sighed and forced himself out of his chair.

Ray could feel Mr. Crow Horse’s eyes on him. He forced a smile and extended his hand.

“Mr. Crow Horse.”

Mr. Crow Horse did not relax as he shook Ray’s hand.

“Ray.” His eyes flitted to Ray’s injured arm, held tight to his side. “Heard you had some trouble at the Iron Clouds’.”

“Part of the job, sir.”

“Hmm,” Mr. Crow Horse said, and left it at that, except his iron gaze holding Ray in its unwavering vice.

“Ma, let us set the table for you,” Walter said.

En route to the cabinets for china, Crow Horse clapped his hand on Ray’s shoulder, shocking him into action. The ritual of setting places was soothing. Sometimes it was nice not to have to think, just to be able to act.

Mr. Crow Horse shooed Jimmy out from under the table. The dog and his bone relocated to between the oven and the back of Ray’s chair. Ray reached his good hand back, gave Jimmy a scratch between the ears.

They fell into the pleasant mindlessness of eating. Ray had just allowed himself to relax when Sarah spoke.

“Walter, do you remember Jenny Afraid of Horses? Lydia’s cousin?”

“Sure. She used to spend summers up here when we were kids. When I was in the third grade, she pushed me out of a tree. I needed twenty stitches in my mouth.”

“You exaggerate.”

“Mighta been eighteen stitches,” Crow Horse allowed.

“Lydia’s mother tells me Jenny’s just had a baby.”

“That’s nice for her,” Walter said. “I didn’t know she was married.”

“She isn’t,” Sarah said. “She was working as a surrogate for a family in Metoska. A healthy baby boy.”

It took Ray a very long time to swallow.

“She’s full-blood Oglala,” Mr. Crow Horse said.

Ray got the lasagna down and then dragged desperately on his Coke to get the taste out of his mouth. It was like ashes. Walter tried to meet his eyes, but Ray couldn’t stand it, and he looked away.

***

It took Ray a while to lay himself down. It was an experience in moving differently, finding the right way to comport himself, the least painful positions.

Crow Horse had left the windows open, curtains blowing in the cool night breeze, in concession to the heat. Ray added ‘central air’ to the list of things he missed about city living. He had stripped down to his shorts, and lay atop the covers, but Jimmy was melded to his side, a furry little heater. Ray’s skin pricked with sweat.

The heat and his medication made Ray sleepy. He leaned back into his pillows and closed his eyes, listened to Crow Horse moving around the bedroom: night music. Boots off, a click as he turned off the lights. Checking to make sure the clock radio’s alarm was set. Stripping off jeans, shirt. Trying for a laundry basket free throw—miss. Checking the alarm again.

Crow Horse’s weight shifted the mattress, shifted Ray’s body. A shiver of pain ran up his arm.

“Faker,” Crow Horse said.

“I was just listening,” Ray said, and opened his eyes.

The moonlight more outlined Crow Horse than lit him. The familiar, fine line of his form; his eyes intent, watching Ray.

“Does it bother you?” Ray asked.

“What?”

“The thought . . . that we can’t have kids together. I mean, even if we could, they wouldn’t be full Sioux.”

Crow Horse frowned. “Ray, there’s bigger issues keeping us from having kids together. You understand that whole biology thing, right?”

Ray gritted his teeth. Crow Horse’s expression softened.

“Hey,” he said gently. “I don’t get why you’re wound up. Explain it to me.”

Ray sighed, ground the back of his head into his pillow.

“It’s just . . . if you were gonna have a kid, you’d have it with a full-blood Lakota woman. One of those surrogates, like your folks want. It would never be with me—because of my blood. Because I’m only a quarter, and you wouldn’t want . . .”

Ray trailed off, mouth pinched thin.

“It’s only blood, Ray,” Crow Horse said.

“Yeah, I know,” Ray said sharply. “It’s stupid.”

“Absolutely.”

Ray chewed on the thought a moment.

“You don’t really believe that,” he said.

“No.”

“Me neither.”

Crow Horse gave Jimmy a nudge. The dog took the hint. Ray heard Jimmy’s paws hit the ground; then step a quick sleep dance, a little circular soft shoe before curling up.

Walter crowded the space. He planted his hands on either side of Ray’s head, brought his body over his. His calm face, broad shoulders, loomed over Ray; the dark curtain of his hair rained down on all sides, making Ray and island.

“It’s not like I never been with Sioux women, Ray,” Crow Horse said. “It’s not like I couldn’t _still_ be with Sioux women—or men, for that matter. I got good blood, a good job, and I’m pretty okay looking, don’tcha think?”

Ray smiled.

“Yes,” he said softly.

“Point is, I could be with a full-blooded Oglala woman, if that’s what was most important to me. But I’m with you. Cuz I wanna be. Cuz some things matter more.”

Ray lifted his face, and waited to be kissed. Walter indulged him, threading a hand through Ray’s hair, cradling Ray’s skull in the palm of his hand. This made one less hand to hold Crow Horse’s weight, and slowly he gave it to Ray to bear, settling along his body by inches. The familiar force of Crow Horse’s body weighing down upon his pinned Ray to the bed, sinking him further into the plush of the mattress. The veil of Crow Horse’s hair all around him, the blanket of his body atop him; Ray was made an island, a country solely Walter’s domain.

Walter stripped Ray’s shorts from him. After all this time, Ray was still overwhelmed by the reverence with which Walter touched him, looked at him; like he was a sacred object. More than he had ever wanted anything, Ray wanted to be worthy of that reverence.

Walter put his hands on Ray, and despite the heat, Ray felt a shiver rock his body. The curtain of Walter’s hair across Ray’s body, like a horsehair whip, stinging and tickling, exciting. It awakened every cell in its wake, and soon Ray was quivering. Crow Horse’s mouth on him, the unrelenting heat of the desert sun at high noon. Ray set his hand on the back of Walter’s head, not directing but holding in place. Holding onto. Against his alert flesh, Ray could feel Crow Horse’s mouth curve into a grin.

Walter played Ray’s body like an instrument, slowly working it up the scales before attempting more complex melodies. Ray was beginning to think he wouldn’t make it past simple chord progressions. His entire body buzzed, vibrated, and the world outside him shimmered and swam. Sensory overload: how could his fragile body possibly contain sensation this large? Anything more would kill him.

Ray shut his eyes on the shifting world. A word crystallized in Ray’s head and, unbidden, escaped through his open lips.

“Please,” he whispered, a word borne on fragile breath.

A brief moment, suspended in time. Ray’s heart held its beat. Then everything released; Ray crested sensation, and remained intact. The world came rushing back into focus, and the soundness returned to his flesh.

Blood throbbed in Ray’s chest, in his head. He could feel his heartbeat everywhere, a driving timpani.

“Walter,” he said softly.

Crow Horse moved smoothly up Ray’s body, the horsehair whip of his hair aggravating Ray’s raw flesh. Ray shivered. For a long moment, Walter stayed suspended over him, his hair falling around them both, his dark eyes reading and parsing Ray beyond the bone. Then Crow Horse’s strong, competent hands were cradling Ray’s ribcage, and Crow Horse was drawing Ray up, turning him around, Ray’s face in the pillow, his body prone.

Generally, it was useless to argue or negotiate when Walter abandoned words and simply spoke with his body, but Ray took a moment to arrange his injured arm into the least painful position. Crow Horse waited, his hands still settled around Ray’s waist.

“All right?” he asked.

Ray nodded, and was still, compliant, as Crow Horse shifted his hips, his legs. For all the butting heads they did, Ray found it immensely comforting to let Walter manipulate him like this. Sometimes it was comforting just to be led, if you knew you were being led somewhere safe.

The bed shifted beneath him, Crow Horse undressing. Another missed shot at the laundry basket.

Crow Horse’s fingers inside him. Ray tried, like he always did, to be quiet as Crow Horse entered him, and like always, he failed, a soft rent noise tearing from his throat. Crow Horse made some wordless horse calming noises, but didn’t gentle any. Ray panted into the pillow and waited for the pain to pass, for it to just feel good. He knew it would, but somehow the hard times always felt like forever.

Slowly, pain gave to pleasure. Ray rode the waves, his body a vessel, the instrument. He shut his eyes and just felt the sensation of Walter moving inside him, just listened to Walter’s rough breaths. His own body’s capacity for sensation dilated, and he surged against the mattress in time with Walter’s percussion. The bed shook and shuddered, the feet clattering against the floor, the headboard knocking against the wall.

Finally, Walter relaxed and the pressure relaxed and Ray let himself go, and then his weak body collapsed into the nest of the bed. Warmth and then gentle weight, Walter’s body covering his again. Walter pressed a lazy kiss to the nape of Ray’s neck. Ray wanted to say something profound and worthy like, “Thank you,” or, “I love you,” but he wasn’t capable of that kind of bare emotion and eloquence in general and with Crow Horse ever, so he just reached back his good hand until he found Walter’s, and when Walter squeezed he squeezed back.


	3. In Which Ray Has Girl Trouble, and Fucks Up the Kitchen

Ray got up and made breakfast before he even heard Crow Horse stir. He was at the table with an egg whites omelet and a bowl of fruit and granola when Walter entered the kitchen.

“Morning,” he said.

Crow Horse stretched and yawned with more pageantry than even Jimmy usually managed.

“Hey, you cooked,” he said. He poked around the stove a bit. “Not that I’m not grateful, Ray, but this is bird food. I’m a man, I need—”

Ray slanted a glance up at him. “There’s bacon in the microwave.”

Crow Horse lit up. “Good _kola_. I knew I kept you around for something.”

Ray finished his eggs and moved on to the other project he hoped to finish before going in to work, a letter to his Congressmen.

Crow Horse and his bacon stopped en route to the table to peer over Ray’s shoulder. When he had read far enough for comprehension, he snorted.

“When you gonna quit all that?”

“Let’s see,” Ray said. “Rez needs new roads, more than one table and one doctor in the clinic, a post office that isn’t run out of Gramma Ghost Bear’s kitchen—”

“So a while, then,” Crow Horse said. “You know, they’re never gonna give us any of that—”

“It isn’t charity,” Ray said. “We’re tax payers, and they’re the government. They are required to do these things. It’s their job.”

“Their job is deciding how to spend all those taxes we’re paying, and damned if the coffer don’t go dry before they get to helping poor Indians.”

“They fixed the water treatment system,” Ray said. “And built a new schoolhouse.”

Crow Horse frowned. “Cuz of Maggie, and you telling her story to all those news people. They don’t care about that anymore, Ray. They got little blonde girls falling in wells, and all sorts of other things to push a dead Indian schoolteacher outta their hearts.”

Ray was quiet for a long moment.

“I’m blonde,” he said finally.

“Don’t go gettin’ no ideas,” Crow Horse said. “I ain’t fishing you outta no well.”

Ray frowned. “I just meant—”

Crow Horse nodded. “But you’re Indian. Yeah, I know, Ray. I meant _Wasi’chu_ girls.”

“Maybe I’ll start writing twice a week,” Ray said.

Crow Horse rolled his eyes and crunched into his bacon. “Stick to your cookin’, hoss.”

***

Danny appeared by the driver’s door of Ray’s cruiser sometime between the second he parked, and the second he left the car.

“Hey, Danny.”

“Uh, hey, Ray.”

It was then that Ray noticed differences in Danny’s appearance. She was still wearing jeans and boots, her normal uniform, but instead of a button-up shirt, she was wearing a tank top. Her long hair was down instead of sequestered into a ponytail, and she was wearing makeup, something Ray had never seen. Apparently, she was just as unused to it; the wind kept blowing her loose hair into her lip-gloss.

“I, um, how are you?” she asked. “I mean, with the getting shot and all.”

Before Ray could answer, Danny’s soft, small hands were on him, resting gently on his wounded arm. She must have been just as surprised by the action as he was, because almost immediately she pulled back like she’d touched something hot.

“I’m fine,” he said slowly. His mind was less devoted to speech than it was trying to figure out what the hell was going on here. “How are you? You, uh, you look nice.”

She beamed. “Really? Thanks! I’m good, I—” The smile faded. “Actually, there was something I needed to talk to you about.”

“Okay. Everything all right?”

“Yeah, good, it’s just that—well, I kind of . . . I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and there’s no way I can’t not tell you. I, um, I think I might love you?”

Ray hoped his expression was not one of abject horror, but there was no way to be sure.

“Obviously, we need to talk,” Danny said hurriedly.

“Absolutely,” Ray said. “I just—I gotta few urgent . . . work things . . . to do, maybe could I meet you in a minute?”

“Yeah. Sure. Great!”

They just stood there, mute and stupid, for a moment before realizing there was no way around walking into the police station together.

Ray burst into Crow Horse’s office, startling him from his newspaper.

“Geez, Ray, take it easy. You’re interrupting my crossword, here. Hey, you know a twelve letter word for ‘uptight?’”

Ray slammed the door behind him.

“Danny’s in love with me,” he said.

“Nah, that’s too many letters,” Crow Horse said. He took in Ray’s unpitying look, and laughed. “Did you not know that? She’s been moonin’ over you for months.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s not a joke!” Crow Horse said. “Girl’s crazy about you. Did you really not know?”

Ray sighed and sank into the chair opposite Crow Horse’s desk.

“No. No idea,” Ray said.

“So why the epiphany?”

“She _told_ me!”

Crow Horse laughed again. Ray scowled.

“This isn’t funny,” Ray said. “I mean, she’s great, but I’m—clearly, I’m off the market, and—would you stop laughing? This is serious.”

“Seriously funny,” Crow Horse said.

Ray sighed, and stood to leave. “I don’t know why I thought you would be helpful with this.”

“Me neither,” Crow Horse said, picking up his paper again. “Seriously, though, Ray—”

Ray stopped, hand on the doorknob.

“Do you know a twelve letter word for ‘uptight,’ or not?”

Ray walked to his desk. This seemed like a good idea until he saw Danny waiting there for him, but by the time he saw her, it was already too late to change course.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“So—”

“Listen, Ray, I—you go first.”

“Danny, I—look. I’m really flattered, and you’re really great—”

Danny’s face crumpled like a house of cards.

“Oh my God,” she said.

“No, really,” Ray said. “It’s just, you know, I’m with Crow Horse.”

Danny nodded, her mouth drawn tight, her eyes on the floor. “Yeah. I know. I know that, Ray, I was stupid to even say anything. I just—it’s stupid, but I guess I just felt if I didn’t let this out, I was gonna explode with it inside me. You know?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I get it. And I meant what I said, Danny, you’re great. I mean, you’re smart, and funny, and beautiful—”

She was, truly. She had a lovely face and a fine body. She was trim, long-limbed. She had great breasts. Sometimes Ray really missed breasts.

And she was sweet, and loyal, and Ray could tell, from the way she was looking at him, that she would be a kind, patient, and supportive partner. If he had a problem, she would devote herself to helping him fix it, and not spend ninety percent of her energy thinking up clever ways to ridicule him over it. It could be really easy. He and Danny could get married, and have mixed babies that wouldn’t be a big deal, because they could be made the old-fashioned way, and because Danny was half-Mohawk, so there would be no question of Ray polluting something pure. And maybe his father—stepfather—would speak to him again, and his mother could write about her son’s family in Christmas card letters, and Ray himself and everyone else would never get caught up in the confusion of who was the man in the relationship.

Still. Maybe there was something to be said for things that did not come so easy.

“—and you’re going to find a great guy—”

Danny rolled her eyes. Her painted mouth trembled. “Yeah, right. The rez is crawling with eligible bachelors.”

“What about Terry?” Ray said. “He’s totally smitten with you.”

Danny laughed harshly. “Yeah, right, Terry, he—” She stopped, her eyes searching Ray’s face. “Smitten?”

“Oh, yeah,” Ray said. “You know when you gave up coffee for New Year’s? Terry drove to Rapid City to get good tea for the break room. And he was after Crow Horse for hours to give you that stabbing at The Singing Sisters. And he does drop stuff a lot when you’re around. He’s normally not like that. Okay, he is, but he’s not as bad.”

Danny subtly slid her eyes to Terry at the dispatch desk.

“Smitten,” she repeated, biting into her bottom lip. “Really.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Ray said.

“Thanks, Ray.” Danny looked up at him shyly. “So, we’re okay? Things aren’t going to be weird at work?”

“Well, no weirder than normal,” Ray said. “But I don’t think we can be blamed for that.”

Danny laughed. “Thanks, Ray. You’re a really good guy. Crow Horse is lucky.”

She left his desk, crossing the station en route to her own workspace. On the way by dispatch, she smiled at Terry, who promptly grinned hugely, and then tripped over his feet, spilling reports everywhere.

Ray burst in on Crow Horse again.

“‘Apprehensive,’” he said.

Crow Horse frowned at his puzzle. “Too many letters again.”

“One ‘n,’” Ray said.

Crow Horse nodded and carefully filled in the boxes.

“You get things sorted out with Danny?” he asked without looking up from his paper. “If you need me to, I can let her know you’re spoken for.”

Ray grinned. Yup. The hard way could be infinitely more rewarding.

***

Ray came back to the cruiser after writing Gramma Two Bulls a speeding ticket—Another one. For eighty, the old lady could move.—to find the radio squawking.

Ray picked up the receiver. “Levoi.”

“Got a minute?” Crow Horse.

“Sure.”

“Need you to meet me at Eddie and Layla Dull Knife’s place up in Metoska. You know where that is?”

“I’ll find it. What’s the problem? Can’t imagine there’s a domestic at their place. Somebody break in?”

“No. Their daughter’s missing.”

***

Crow Horse was already there when Ray arrived at the Dull Knife residence. They had left the door open for him, the screen door unlocked. Ray found Crow Horse and the Dull Knifes in the living room.

Crow Horse caught sight of Ray and nodded in acknowledgement. “Eddie, Layla, you know Officer Levoi.”

Eddie nodded, and shook Ray’s hand. “Thanks for coming out, Ray.”

“I’m sorry for the circumstances,” Ray said.

“Their oldest, Nancy, went out last night, and didn’t come home,” Crow Horse said.

Ray took the pad and pen from his jacket pocket. “How old is she?”

“Thirteen,” Eddie said. “We thought maybe she spent the night at a friend’s, but we’ve called everyone we can think of—”

“She told us she was going to see a friend,” Layla interjected. “Lisa. Lisa Running Elk. But we called her parents, and they say they never saw Nancy—”

“We’ll talk to her,” Ray said.

“She’s a good girl,” Layla said. “They’re both good girls.”

Ray glanced at Crow Horse. He nodded.

“So this kind of thing is unusual?” Ray asked.

“Very,” Eddie said.

“Nancy’s always very good about telling us where she’s going. She’s very thoughtful, very responsible. She helps look after her little brother and sister . . .”

Layla trailed off. Eddie put an arm around her, and she fell into the embrace.

“Probably just forgot to call home,” Crow Horse said. “You know how it is at that age. But we’re going to look into it. Don’t worry.”

He touched Ray’s arm, and they started out. Layla hurried after them. She closed her hand around Ray’s bicep, and he turned.

Layla grabbed a photograph from the mantle, and thrust it into his hands.

“She’s a good girl,” Layla said. “Please find her.”

Ray looked down at the picture in his hands. A beautiful young woman, clear copper skin, long raven hair, smiling eyes.

Ray caught himself before he dropped it. The world bled from around him. He could hear Crow Horse and the Dull Knifes talking, the ceiling fan spinning overhead, and the kids watching television in the next room, but he experienced these things as though hearing them underwater. Bloated, slow; mere outlines instead of full-color sensation.

“Ray,” Crow Horse said.

When Ray didn’t respond, Crow Horse dug his elbow into Ray’s arm, shocking him from his reverie.

“Officer Levoi,” Crow Horse said sharply, making a weapon of Ray’s own name.

Ray looked up from the picture, and the real world came rushing back in Technicolor.

“Yeah, sorry,” he said. He felt himself flush and self-consciously wiped a hand across his brow. His hand shook as he handed Layla back the photograph. “We’ll take care of it, Mrs. Dull Knife. Don’t worry.”

***

“What the hell was your problem in there?” Crow Horse demanded the moment the Dull Knifes were out of earshot.

“I’ve seen her before,” Ray said. “The girl. Nancy.”

“Well, shit, Ray, so have I,” Crow Horse said. “You’ve lived on the rez for three years; it’s not like we got a huge population here—”

Ray reached the cruiser. He didn’t get in the car, just stood there outside it, tapping his fists against the metal frame. He didn’t know what frustrated him more; Crow Horse’s misunderstanding, or his own impotence to explain.

“No,” Ray said. “Recently. In—I saw her in a dream, Walter.”

Crow Horse exhaled slowly. He stopped, door open like an extended wing, shielding his body from the desert wind. He gave Ray a long look over the cruiser’s roof.

“Was she alive?” he asked finally.

“Yeah,” Ray said. He paused. “I mean—I think so. I don’t—my other visions, they happened in the past, so . . . so everyone in them was dead by the time I saw them. I don’t—Walter, I’m afraid that’s what happened to Nancy.”

Crow Horse nodded. He looked at Ray for a long time, unspeaking. When he finally spoke, it was softly. Ray could tell, by the abject expression on Crow Horse’s face, not to expect comfort. That didn’t mean he didn’t want it, however, and he recognized Walter’s tone as a concession. It was the best he could do.

“Come on,” Crow Horse said. “We got work to do.”

It wasn’t enough, but it would do.

***

Ray followed Crow Horse to the Running Elk residence. The white noise of desert driving kicked up images in his head. A tiny, rounded skull, a cat or rabbit. Small, uneven teeth. Little brown hands, dark against the bone white of the skull, the bone white of the desert.

“You talk to Lisa while I talk to her parents,” Crow Horse said. “I wanna know what she’s got to say when they’re not standing there.”

Adam Running Elk stayed talking to Crow Horse in the kitchen while his wife walked Ray down the hall to Lisa’s bedroom.

The girl was stretched out on her bed, listening to the radio. Her mother clicked it off as she and Ray entered the room. Lisa sat up to regard them.

“This is Officer Levoi from the tribal police,” Jennifer said. “He’s here to ask you a few questions about Nancy.”

The girl frowned. “I don’t know anything. I already said.”

Ray smiled and sat beside Lisa on the bed, pulling out his pen and pad again.

“It’s my job to ask questions, anyway.” He looked up at Jennifer. “I think Walter’s got some more questions for you and your husband if you’re okay with me talking to Lisa alone.”

Jennifer hesitated for a moment, then nodded and walked back down the hall.

“I don’t know anything,” Lisa repeated.

Ray focused on flipping through his pad for a blank page.

“It’s not my job to get you in trouble with your parents,” he said. “You or Nancy. It’s my job to find out if something bad happened to her, and then to help her.”

Lisa eyed him warily. “So . . . if I tell you something, it’s just to help Nancy? You’re not going to tell anybody?”

Ray met her eyes. “I’ll tell my partner. But that’s it; it’ll be strictly police business.”

Lisa dropped her gaze, studied her fingernails. She had painted them pink, but the nail polish was flaking. Little glimpses of her true color showed through.

“She told her mom she was coming here,” Lisa said.

“But she wasn’t. Do you know where she was going?”

“No.”

“Does Nancy have a boyfriend? Any guys she likes?”

“Well, yeah, she has guys she likes,” Lisa said. “But she isn’t going out with anyone, or anything.”

Ray tapped his pen against the pad. “She drink? Do drugs?”

Lisa frowned, tugged at a loose cuticle. “I mean, we smoke pot sometimes. But she’s not, like, a druggie.”

“Nothing weird or out of the ordinary lately? Have you noticed any changes in Nancy?”

“Well . . .”

“Anything you can tell me will help,” Ray said. “You want to help your friend, don’t you?”

A tiny bead of blood broke free from Lisa’s cuticle. She stopped bothering it, and looked up at Ray.

“She met this guy,” she said. “Maybe a month ago? Not, like, a boyfriend or anything. An older guy. A _Wasi’chu_ guy.”

Ray looked up from his notes. “A white guy? You’re sure?”

“Yeah. I mean, I never met him, but that’s what she said.”

“Someone from off the rez?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Ray said. “This is good. You’re doing really well. Do you know where Nancy met this guy?”

“No.”

“What did she do with him?”

“Nothing _with_ him,” Lisa said. “It was like a job.”

“He gave her money? Do you know what kind of things she did for him?”

“I know—she didn’t talk about it a lot, but I know she took him . . . she showed him some places on the rez. Like a tour guide, maybe.”

“Okay,” Ray said. “Do you know where she took him? Specific places?”

“No, but it wasn’t in the villages. Out in the Badlands.”

“How often did she do this? How many times?”

“I don’t know. But I know . . . she—he paid her a lot of money.”

“How much?” Ray asked. He did some hypothetical figures in his head—what he’d made at his first job, how much was big money to a teenager who’d grown up on the rez.

“I know the first time it was like five hundred dollars. And after that, it was more.”

Ray blinked. This nowhere approximated his math. What it did approximate was his biweekly paycheck. A cold stone of worry settled in his gut.

“You’re sure?” he asked. His mouth was dry.

“Yeah. She wants to go to college in Rapid City, but her parents can’t afford it, so—”

“So she was excited about the money,” Ray said. “Okay. Thank you, Lisa; you’ve helped a lot.”

Lisa tagged at Ray’s heels on his way out the door.

“And you’re not going to tell my parents? About the drugs or anything?”

“I won’t. I promise,” Ray said.

Lisa bit her bottom lip. “I didn’t think Nancy was in trouble. If I thought she was, I wouldn’t have covered for her.”

“Don’t worry,” Ray said. “We’ll find her.”

***

A sleepless night, watching the underwater tableau of the room in moonlight and darkness. Ray had a fervent desire to remain ignorant of the time, but apparently had no willpower at all—every five seconds, his eyes flickered back to the glaring red beacon of the alarm clock. Next came the inevitable mental math: how many hours he had spent awake instead of sleeping, how many more until he had to leave his bed and go out into the waking world.

Ray growled and flipped himself into a new position. He was careless, and hurt his shoulder; he punched his pillow in retaliation. The pillow did not seem to mind; incensed, Ray grunted and collapsed, face down, into his indifferent adversary.

“Watch the racket, hoss.”

Crow Horse’s voice, waterlogged from sleep, startled Ray. His muscles tensed, and he jerked his face from the pillow.

Crow Horse’s face was puffy and lined from sleep, his usually sharp eyes bleary. A pang of guilt hit Ray in the gut, and he started to haul himself out of bed, collecting his pillow.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll go bother the couch.”

Walter laid a hand on Ray’s arm, and Ray stopped.

“Didn’t say ‘leave,’” Crow Horse said. “Said ‘quiet down.’”

Ray got back in bed.

“Sorry,” he said.

Ray arranged himself on his stomach. He closed his eyes and tried to will himself to sleep. He thought Crow Horse would do the same, but then there was the gentle pressure of Crow Horse’s hand on the small of his back. Ray opened his eyes to find Walter looking at him.

“You wanna tell me what’s bothering you?”

Ray had been thinking, in his hours of insomnia, on just the way to open this conversation. But now that it was time to speak the words, he found himself reluctant. Saying them aloud solidified the ideas; it would make things true.

And he did not want these things to be true.

“Ray,” Crow Horse said, gently.

“I been thinking,” Ray said. “About Arthur Long Jacket.”

“Okay.”

“I was thinking . . . Lisa Running Elk said Nancy was working with a _Wasi’chu_ guy. And Arthur Long Jacket was killed by someone from off the rez.”

“Yeah,” Crow Horse said. “I put those things together, too, Ray.”

Ray’s mouth twisted in indecision. Finally, he said, “So, what I was thinking . . . I thought maybe if this guy had no problem killing a hermit with no contact with anyone, someone no one would believe . . . then he’d definitely kill a little girl with a family who loves and believes her.”

Crow Horse looked at him for a long moment, his dark eyes studying Ray’s face. Then he nodded, heavily.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I put that together, too, Ray.”

Something left him, and Ray felt empty inside. He lacked the strength to support his hollow shell, and his weight just fell to the bed. He squeezed his eyes shut.

Walter’s hand ran along Ray’s spine, settled between his shoulder blades.

“Listen,” Crow Horse said. “Some things you can’t fix. Some things you just lose.”

***

Even after coming to the rez, there were _Wasi’chu_ traits borne into Ray’s blood, things he could not seem to excise. Through tortuous trials, Crow Horse had begun to acclimate him to Indian time; sometimes Ray could go entire afternoons without checking his watch (often because Crow Horse physically removed it from him, but progress was progress). Still, Ray hated to wait. He got frustrated having to drive three hours for good Chinese food. And he punished himself; he had cut his workout routine since leaving DC, but he would still run for miles, until he passed the ecstasy of pure pain, until it was mindless, just muscles.

The shower, too, could be punishing. He was getting better about it, due largely to Walter’s constant complaints about all the hot water being used up, but sometimes he would turn the water to scalding and stand beneath the showerhead until his body felt numb. Baptismal clean.

Ray was well on his way, the burn of the water searing along his skin, the bathroom thick with fog, when the bathroom door opened. Without preamble, Crow Horse yanked back the shower curtain.

Ray frowned. The cold air bit at his skin; he could feel it penetrating down into the muscle, undoing all the hot water’s work.

“I am not in the mood for company.”

Ray knew instantly something was wrong; Crow Horse looked neither amused or annoyed, just stone serious. He shoved a towel at Ray.

“Get dressed,” he said. “Right now.”

Ray shut off the shower and rubbed his face with the towel. “What’sa matter? We get a call?”

“They found Nancy Dull Knife.”

Ray stopped cold in the action of wrapping the towel around his waist. Droplets of water fell from him in slow motion. Finally, the words made it past his heavy tongue.

“Is she alive?”

Crow Horse waited a beat too long, and Ray knew the answer before he was told.

***

The girl was hidden better than Arthur Long Jacket, but she’d been dead almost as long. Bare branches and little thorns snagged Ray’s clothes, hair, and skin as he negotiated the steep side of the ditch to get to her.

George offered him a handkerchief. “You’re bleeding, Ray.”

Ray shook his head, and knelt by the girl. Her eyes were cloudy, her skin blanched. Her dark hair was tangled with thorns, was tangled around her. There was evidence that she had been visited by animals. Fucking coyotes; Ray hated the little bastards, had hated them ever since they led him to Maggie. They preyed on the defenseless.

The front of Nancy’s t-shirt was dark and crusty with blood. George had found a bullet hole—large caliber pistol, probably a .45—but no casings. No tracks. The place had been wiped clean.

Crow Horse stood on the road above them, looking down at their progress. “Well?”

“Not a goddamn thing,” Ray said. “Same as last time.” He turned to George. “Help me get her out of here.”

Ray took Nancy by the shoulders; George took her feet. With as much care as they could manage while dodging the brambles, they brought the girl up out of the ditch and laid her out on the dusty road.

Crow Horse gave Ray a long look. His eyes were unreadable behind his sunglasses.

“You’re bleeding, chief,” he said finally.

A hot burst of anger erupted in Ray’s chest, and he had to turn away, walk away. The movement helped work loose the knot of fury; it thrummed through his veins now, running all through his body, but at least he could breathe again.

“George, why don’t you take care of getting her to the station, collecting evidence, all that.”

Ray wheeled around. “Walter, I can—”

Crow Horse removed his Raybans, leveled a laser-precise look at Ray.

“I need you to call up Rapid City, let ’em know what’s going on. Don’t need no jurisdiction problems here when we catch this sumbitch.”

“Walter—”

“Officer Levoi,” Crow Horse said, each word as heavy and precise as if it had been forged specifically to wound Ray.

Ray had to turn and walk away again; if he did not burn up some of this anger, if he had to keep looking Walter in the face, he would start a fight.

“Yes,” he said, ice pick words. “ _Sir_.”

Ray stormed to his cruiser, and Crow Horse let him go without comment. Ray slammed the door so hard it hurt his arm, the good one, the vibrations rattling up to his shoulder. Ray went to put the keys in the ignition and found he was shaking too hard. He dropped the keys and just sat for a long moment in the front seat, drinking up the hothouse heat, waiting until he was composed enough to drive.

Ray’s eyes flickered briefly to the rearview. Crow Horse was watching him, eyes inscrutable behind his sunglasses, hands on his hips. Ray cursed and yanked his seatbelt on, forced the keys into the ignition.

Ray drove home and gave the Feds a call on the kitchen phone. They were vague and noncommittal. Ray knew they could afford to be; they hadn’t just held a dead little girl in their arms, hadn’t had to pull her out of the ditch where she’d been tossed like a piece of trash.

Still, it didn’t help his frame of mind. Rage boiled in his veins, and he hung up the phone and kicked a kitchen chair across the room, feet screaming on the linoleum. It wasn’t enough, and Ray drove himself into the wall; he hit with his bad shoulder and pain shuddered throughout him. It wasn’t enough. Ray balled his good fist and drove it into the plaster until it gave, a softball sized crater in the wall.

The fight went out of him, and Ray sank to the floor. He felt detached from his body, alien. He understood, if he tried, that the linoleum beneath him was cool, that his hand was throbbing. But he had to focus for the sensation. Instead, he closed his eyes and let his mind drift away from physical reality.

Far away, Ray was aware of the sound of Crow Horse’s cruiser crunching over the gravel, of the kitchen door swinging open—needed to oil that hinge; Crow Horse had been promising to do it for months. Crow Horse’s boots on the linoleum, serious steps.

Ray opened his eyes.

Crow Horse glanced at the hole in the wall, but did not mention it.

“Thought I’d find you here,” Crow Horse said. “Prob’ly you should come down to the station. We got a lot of work to do.”

Ray didn’t say anything. Crow Horse came within a yard of him, and knelt so they were roughly at eye level.

“We talking?” Crow Horse asked.

“About the case,” Ray said. “Did you make the notification?”

“Yeah.”

“And—”

“And it went just how you’d expect, Ray.”

“George find anything?”

“No.”

Ray swore. He leaned his head back until the wall stopped him, looked heavenward. It was painful in a rewarding way.

Crow Horse nodded at the hole in the wall. “You do that before or after you called Rapid City?”

“After,” Ray said, the word as immaculately manicured as a topiary sculpture.

“You do anything else stupid?”

“I said we’d talk about the case.”

“Fine,” Crow Horse said. “You got a week to patch that up, paint and all; not done by then, I kick your ass.”

“In your dreams.”

Crow Horse just looked at Ray for a long moment. They had come to the occasional blow, scuffles that generally ended in ninety second wrestling matches followed by sex or name calling, or both, depending upon the nature of the argument and who came out on top. They had never actually fought. Ray dragged his eyes over Walter’s frame. Ray had two inches on him, but Crow Horse weighed more. Ray was pretty sure he was faster, and he’d had combat training at Quantico. But Crow Horse had been in more fights growing up. Tough call.

Still, at the moment Ray was willing to risk it. He held Crow Horse’s gaze until Crow Horse shook his head and came to his feet. Then Ray gritted his teeth, sick of himself; he was hoping for a fight, which was stupid. It wouldn’t solve anything.

“Wait,” Ray said.

Crow Horse turned, regarded him for a moment. Then he walked back over, extended a hand.

Ray accepted it. He let Crow Horse help him to his feet.


	4. In Which Crow Horse Puts on a Suit, and Ray Gets into a Fight

Mirror Crow Horse was frustrated. Walking World Crow Horse’s fingers were slow, and it was making them both look bad.

“Goddammit,” Walking World Crow Horse said. And then, a moment over, “Ray.”

Mirror Ray crowded the frame, his chest to Crow Horse’s back, arms curved about his neck as though conferring a medal. His clever fingers made quick work of the troublesome necktie, and Mirror Crow Horse’s expression relaxed.

“You look nice,” Ray said.

This was true, but unspoken was how discomfiting it was to see Crow Horse in a suit. This only added to the sense of wrongness, of existing briefly in a world out of step, that had been mounting since Ray got up to face the day.

Mirror Crow Horse shifted his shoulders uncomfortably beneath the heavy starch of his jacket. He moved his neck within the noose of the tie without finding a comfortable position, then tugged one last time at the envelope-sharp edge of his collar, and vacated the frame.

Mirror Ray was left suddenly, like a shot, alone, looking into his own pale eyes. An infinity of reflections. He turned away.

“Are you ready?” Crow Horse asked.

“No,” Ray said, without thought. The instinctual answer was usually the correct one.

Crow Horse looked at him for a long moment, his expression gentled from the irritation of the strange clothing.

“I meant are you ready to leave the house,” he said softly.

Ray closed his eyes, struck by his own mistake. Maybe if he just stayed here, unmoving, unseeing, he could forestall the inevitable.

Crow Horse was waiting for him, all dressed up in his suit. Ray opened his eyes.

“Yeah,” he said. “Will you drive?”

Jimmy, who did not understand, followed them to the door, tail wagging. Ray patted him, not sure whom he meant to comfort.

“Good boy,” he said. “Stay.”

Walter locked the door behind them. He had the keys in one hand; the other hand he rested—absentmindedly, like an afterthought, like habit—at the small of Ray’s back, propelling him gently but inexorably toward the car.

***

Contemporarily, the actual customs did not vary greatly between Sioux and _Wasi’chu_ funerals. Maybe that made it worse; the differences were small, one step wrong. Like Crow Horse and his suit: a familiar sight, but slightly altered, unsettling. Ray wanted to detach and be soothed by the numb rote of ritual, but these small, odd details kept jarring him from oblivion.

Ray had had to call the FBI office in Rapid City and explain why the body had to be released from their morgue.

Crow Horse tended to do well at the center of Sioux social events, even when that event was a wake. He stayed in the main room, with the family and the body, clasping hands and saying all the right things in perfect Lakota. He had already begun to pick at the top button of his shirt, to loosen his tie.

Only a few days ago, he and Ray had stood in that room and told the Dull Knifes that they would find their daughter. And, Ray was sure, it was also the room where Crow Horse had sat the Dull Knifes down to tell them that they had, indeed, found her.

Ray found it difficult to stay anchored. He drifted from room to room, making little eye contact, refusing drinks, and saying, “I’m sorry” a lot. Mrs. Crow Horse was there, and Danny; they both hugged him, and Sarah cried. Mr. Crow Horse nodded at him, and Ray nodded back. It was maybe their best conversation to date.

Ray went into the bustle of the kitchen. He spent a lot of time in kitchens at wakes; he didn’t drink and he didn’t know the songs, so it was hard for him to stay with the body. He was much better when there was something he could do.

Gramma Dull Knife shooed him away; they had plenty of food and nothing left to prepare.

Ray was lost, and hovered for a moment in indecision. A small pressure on his arm forced him to action, and he turned.

Lisa Running Elk, her face puffy and red.

“Hey, Officer Levoi? Do you remember me? I’m Lisa, we talked—”

“I remember you,” Ray said.

“I’m sorry,” he added. “About Nancy.”

She sniffled. “Me, too. I—” She looked around the kitchen, Nancy’s family and friends milling around them. “Do you think we could talk somewhere else?”

Ray followed her down the hall. She shut the door behind them, and Ray looked around. Posters of heartthrobs, a pink bedspread. Nancy’s bedroom. A little knot condensed in Ray’s gut.

“I . . .” Lisa bit her lip. “Was it my fault? About Nancy? Because I covered for her, and didn’t tell anybody about that guy until the police came—”

“Oh, honey, no. No. I think . . . what happened to Nancy, it had probably already happened by the time I talked to you. There was nothing you could do.”

“She was my best friend,” Lisa said. Then, “You’re going to find that guy, right, the one who hurt her?”

Ray found himself unable to hold the girl’s gaze. His eyes searched the room for safe harbor, and found none. Pictures of Nancy and her friends, smiling and happy and alive; tennis shoes—cheap, but lovingly cared for, with the boring white factory laces traded for neon pink ones; a social studies worksheet on her desk, filled out in blue pen, diamonds dotting the i’s. She had spent the last day of her life doing her homework; Crow Horse and her parents had been right. Nancy had been a good girl.

Lisa was a good girl, too. And she was waiting for Ray, who was the adult, to make things better, not understanding that some things could not be made better.

Ray looked at her. “I’m going to do everything I can to find him. To make sure he’s punished. I promise, Lisa.”

***

They left the wake late, though there were plenty of people still at the Dull Knifes’. They would, Ray knew, stay with the body all night.

Crow Horse was drunk enough that Ray had to drive. The desert got so dark at night; Ray felt—the only car on the road, Crow Horse silent beside him—like the only man left on the planet.

Crow Horse wasn’t too drunk to walk, and he walked himself into the kitchen and then sat down at the table, finally removing the hated tie. Ray fed Jimmy, and started making coffee.

“You know it’s nighttime,” Crow Horse said. “Usually we drink coffee in the morning, when we need to be alert.”

Ray began to empty the contents of his briefcase onto the table: crime scene reports, Arthur Long Jacket’s arrest record, the forensics they’d gotten back from Rapid City.

“I’m going to get some work done,” Ray said.

“I can see that,” Crow Horse said. “Maybe you should get some sleep; it’s been a long day—”

Ray slammed both hands down on the table; the salt and pepper shakers rattled, and Ray’s pen went flying off onto the floor; it immediately rolled under the oven.

“You better settle down before you punch another hole in the wall.”

Ray gritted his teeth. “This shouldn’t have happened. Why do I have these stupid visions if I can’t _do anything_ about them?”

“Yeah, right,” Crow Horse bit out. “Your goddamn visions. Well, I wouldn’t know shit about that, would I, Ray?”

Frustration burned in Ray’s chest. He wanted to explain that seeing dead little girls and being shot in the back was not his idea of a good time. He wanted to tell Walter that, if he had any manner of control over it, he would give his visions to him in a second. He wanted to remind Walter of all the things he _had_ given up for him: his career, his friends, being within a hundred miles of his family and a decent pizza. And most of all, he wanted to tell Walter this ticklish, intangible truth: the certainty that he _wanted_ to give Walter all these things, and more, everything; that it was a choice he made every single day and would continue to make. He wanted to tell Walter these things, but lacked the alchemy to transmit the feelings into words.

Instead, Ray said, “Walter.” And he put his hand atop Crow Horse’s, and when Crow Horse started to pull away, he said, “Please.”

Walter relaxed. He stopped pulling away, and his expression—all tautness and irritation and wanting—relaxed, and he was just looking at Ray, not to square off or size him up but just to see him. And Crow Horse took his other hand, and he reached up and rested it on the back of Ray’s neck, a firm and reassuring presence.

***

 _Jimmy on one side, Walter on the other. Felled by comfortable proximity and whatever the doctor had shot into him, Ray leaned back into his pillows. He felt his body relax on a cellular level._

Walter’s fingers combed lightly through Ray’s hair. Ray leaned against Crow Horse’s palm; Crow Horse laughed.

“You know,” he said, “I kinda like you like this.”

Crow Horse helped Ray scoot closer to him. The familiar warmth and topography of Crow Horse’s body cradled him, and Ray closed his eyes.

“Like what?” he mumbled.

“All drugged and stupid.”

Ray frowned. “You like me stupid? Punch line?”

“Nah,” Crow Horse said. “I just never seen you drunk before, on account of you not drinking, and it’s kinda nice to see you like this, with your guard down.”

“Mm,” Ray said.

Jimmy nuzzled against him. Ray thought of something he’d read once, that one dog is just a dog, and two dogs is just two dogs, but three dogs is a pack. When the numbers are right, something changes within them, and the animals remember their blood, their history.

Ray didn’t know much about that behaviorism crap or anything, but he knew that he and Walter and Jimmy were a pack. And he knew that, when he was with Walter, he was different than when he wasn’t with him. That just the passive act of being with Walter changed something inherent and primal within him.

***

Driving the rez roads at night was like traveling through space. The enclosure of the metal fuselage, separating you from the absolute quiet and darkness of the void.

“George says Terry’s taking Danny out.”

Ray smiled. “Good.”

“She sure moved on from you quick.”

“Oh, no. I’m still seeing her on the side. You’re cool with that, right?”

Ray didn’t have to look at Crow Horse to know his expression, but it was too good to miss. Ray looked, and he laughed.

Slowly, the surprise and irritation drained from Crow Horse’s face, and he looked caught, distracted.

“Hey, Ray. Look over there. You see that?”

Ray snorted, and kept his eyes on the road. “Yeah, right.”

“No, really.” Crow Horse strained against his seatbelt, crowded the dash. His arm cut between Ray and the steering wheel, pointing out the driver’s side window. “Look at that.”

Ray looked. After a moment, he caught it, and frowned. A flickering dot of light in the black galaxy of the Badlands.

“Campers?” Ray said.

“Idiots, you mean. Or criminals. You know how cold it gets out here at night, and the damn coyotes—”

“Let’s pay them a visit,” Ray said.

“A friendly warning,” Crow Horse agreed. “We’re the police; it’s a public service.”

Ray pulled off the road, the cruiser’s axle jostling uncomfortably over the uneven terrain of the open desert. Crow Horse tightened his seatbelt, his hand clutching the door handle for desperate purchase.

“Histrionic,” Ray said.

“Like you never crashed a car driving in the desert.”

“I submitted a requisition proposal to the tribal council for off-road cruisers—”

“Don’t hold your breath. _Do_ slow down.”

Ray ignored him. He had gotten much better at reservation driving, and Crow Horse always groused when Ray drove.

“Campfire,” Crow Horse said as they drew closer. “You were right.”

“Don’t sound so surprised. You see anybody?”

“Not yet. There’s a truck . . . oh shit.”

The truck’s headlights flashed on, so bright and precise that Ray had to shield his eyes. Ray flipped the cruiser’s roof lights on.

The congested growl of the truck’s motor echoed through the basin.

“Shit,” Ray said.

“Criminal it is.”

Ray sped up, swerved as to block the truck’s access to the road. Ray felt something rattle inside his chest as the cruiser bumped and crashed over the terrain.

“Slow. Down.”

“Do you wanna drive?” Ray asked. “I’ll pull over.”

“In the middle of a pursuit?”

“Unless you stop bitching.”

The truck changed direction, put the campfire between them. Ray swore, and slowed down to make the turn. Sand slid beneath the tires; the cruiser slid over the sand. The flickering bonfire was a supernova in the midst of the black desert, was looming ever closer. Ray slammed on the brakes. The cruiser stopped shy of the fire, and the truck growled off into the night.

Ray hit the steering wheel. “Dammit!”

“Win some, lose some,” Crow Horse said, unbuckling his seatbelt. He opened his door. Boots in the desert dust, he turned to Ray. “Comin’?”

The area around the campfire was littered with debris; apparently, the guy hadn’t had time to pack before he decided to run.

“Looks like he’s been here a while,” Crow Horse said.

He began a slow circle of the scene. Ray stayed close to the campsite. He knelt by the fire, and began to sort through the abandoned detritus. He picked up a small, double-sided hammer; some neon orange tape.

“Looks like tools,” he said.

Crow Horse looked up at him from spiraling out. “Tools for what?”

Ray shook his head. “I don’t know.”

There was an abandoned knapsack a few feet from the campfire. Ray picked it up, began to paw through it. Tape measurer, compass.

“Construction, maybe?” Ray said.

“Bullshit,” Crow Horse said. “What the hell could he be constructing that he needs to run from the police?”

Ray shook his head, and kept at the contents of the knapsack. Candy bar, a few crinkled receipts from fast food joints and gas stations in Rapid City. No wallet or any other form of positive ID; that would be too easy.

“Hey, Ray!”

Ray looked up; Crow Horse was holding something up, something too small to distinguish except as a glitter in the fire’s light.

“Got some casings,” Crow Horse said. “.45’s.”

Ray felt a chill run through him.

“Coincidence,” he said.

“Yeah,” Crow Horse said. “The .45 is the round of choice for the discerning criminal living in the middle of the goddamn desert.”

Pliers, tweezers, some pens. A small notebook. Ray flipped it open, flipped through the pages. He frowned; numbers—coordinates, maybe? Or maybe just figuring the tip. Ray sighed, and kept looking. More numbers—these were definitely money, marked with dollar signs. Zeroes. Lots of zeroes.

The last used page was a series of vaguely geometric shapes. A map, rendered in blue ink. There were no legends, just vague arrows and directions spread throughout: “right,” “stop,” “careful.”

The i’s were dotted with diamonds.

“Walter!”

Crow Horse jogged up the dunes.

Ray’s hand reached to the bottom of the sack, felt something small, hard, round. It was the size and weight of an apple, and wrapped in tissues. Ray pulled it out of the sack, gently unwrapped it.

A skull, the off white of an egg, talc smooth to the touch. Enormous, rounded orbitals where the eyes had been; small, crooked teeth. For a moment it was familiar and alien, as it had been in his dream. But the moment he recognized it from his dream, Ray recognized it for what it was.

Ray dropped the skull. It didn’t fall far, just back into the knapsack in his lap, but it was still evidence and could be damaged.

Ray couldn’t bring himself to look.

“Walter,” he said softly. He couldn’t seem to manage the air to make the word any larger.

“Whatcha got?” He caught Ray’s expression, and frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“I didn’t recognize it before,” Ray said. “I thought it was an animal. A cat, or a coyote or something.”

Walter came to kneel beside him. “What’s the matter?”

Ray looked down at the sack, cradling the little skull. He didn’t want to touch it again, but he had to. He picked it up, and held it out for Crow Horse.

He didn’t take it, but his eyes went to it and stayed there, as though attracted by magnetism.

“What the hell is that, Ray?”

Ray closed his fingers around the skull. Carefully, he wrapped it back in the tissues.

“It’s a baby,” Ray said. “A human infant.”

***

They could have mailed the evidence to Rapid City, but driving was faster. Walter offered to go with him, even though he hated visiting the Feds, and there was plenty to do at the station.

They drove silently for almost an hour, Ray squinting into the sun as he maneuvered the truck down the long, dusty roads; Crow Horse looking out the window at the desert going by.

“I think after we wrap up this case, we should maybe think about taking a vacation,” Crow Horse said.

Ray glanced over at him, but Crow Horse was looking out the window, his face turned away.

“Sure,” Ray said. “We catch this sick fuck, then whattya say, we hit the beach? Maybe Disney?”

Crow Horse looked over at him. “I’m serious, Ray.”

Ray knew he should let it go, but found himself unable.

“You’d fit right in at Disney World,” he continued. “It’s like the _Wasi’chu_ Mecca.”

“I’m serious,” Crow Horse said again. “Not about Disney—but we could use a break, I figure. This case has got you pretty shook up.”

Ray wanted to argue, but then realized that his hands on the wheel were literally shaking.

“Dead kids,” he said. He bit his tongue, like that would take it back.

Crow Horse nodded. “I know. It’s hard for everybody. Me too, Ray. I’m just sayin’. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take some time off.”

 _Me too, Ray._ Crow Horse’s admission helped enormously in getting Ray to relax.

“It has been a while,” he said.

“Sure,” Crow Horse said amicably. “Maybe we’ll go out east, visit your folks.”

Ray rolled his eyes heavenward. “That sounds low-stress.”

“Maybe see the Orioles,” Crow Horse continued as though he hadn’t been interrupted.

Ray relented. “That would be nice.”

***

“Ah, the Indian FBI. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Got some evidence for your _Wasi’chu_ lab,” Ray said. He pushed between SA Martin and his desk, forcing the agent to take his feet down.

Martin frowned, and began to paw through the box of evidence Ray set before him. “Can’t you just have your medicine men divine all this shit?”

“Longer wait for a good medicine man than a half-assed forensics lab,” Ray said.

Martin grimaced. “Very funny, Levoi.” He peeled back the tissues swaddling the skull, and started. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” Ray said. “It’s been a fun case. I’d really like it over with, so if you could have your boys rush it—”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t count on that,” Martin said. “It’s not enough you gotta use our resources, now you wanna push to the head of the line?”

“I could always stop liaising and let you boys drive up to the rez every time we got a crime bigger than jaywalking,” Ray said. “You like frybread?”

“Yeah,” Martin snapped. “Maybe I could shack up with you and your Tonto boyfriend. You wanna smoke my peace pipe, Levoi?”

Martin laughed and leaned back in his chair, put his feet back up on his desk.

Ray felt the fury bubbling beneath his skin. He tried to steel his wild flesh; he thought of _interagency cooperation_ and _jurisdictional disputes_ and the cub agent humiliation of having to beg the forensics guys to get to your evidence before the statute of limitations expired.

Fuck it.

Ray gave a swift kick to the hind legs of Martin’s chair. Poorly balanced already, it went flying out from under him, spilling Martin to the floor. The agent, sputtering, scrambled to get to his feet; Ray kicked him in the side before he could, sent him sprawling to his back.

Ray set his foot on Martin’s sternum, pinning him to the floor.

“SA Martin,” Ray said. “I’m going to give you a call Monday. I expect my evidence back from the lab by then. If it isn’t, I’ll have no choice but to come back and visit you in person.”

Ray removed his foot, began out the door. Martin, beet red and dripping with sweat, came shakily to a sitting position.

“You redskin faggot son of a bitch—”

Ray stopped in the doorway, hit Martin with an unpitying look.

“You got a problem, take it up with DC. You can’t touch me, and you know it. Now stop blubbering and get my shit to the lab.”

Crow Horse frowned as Ray got back in the truck.

“There a reason you’re sweating?” he asked.

Ray wiped absently at his brow with the back of his hand. “Guess they need their AC looked at. Ready to go?”

Crow Horse continued to study Ray, brow creased with disbelief, as he buckled his seatbelt.

“Sure, Ray. Whatever you say.”

***

After finally getting the fight he’d been spoiling for, Ray felt downright chipper. He even patched up the hole he’d made in the kitchen without Crow Horse having to nag or scowl at him.

Ray walked into the tribal police headquarters Monday morning to find a cub FBI agent waiting at his desk. The kid looked fresh out of the academy; he was wearing a brand new suit, and his shoes were too tight. Ray smiled.

“Are you Levoi?” the kid asked.

Ray slung his jacket over the back of his chair. “Yup. Who are you?”

“I, um, Special Agent Martin sent me? He told me you needed these.”

The kid shoved a manila folder at Ray. Ray flipped through it; his forensics results. Excellent.

“Thanks,” Ray said.

The kid hesitated a moment before leaving his cubicle. Ray raised his brow. “What?”

“Nothing, just—I was—well, I thought you were going to be an Indian guy.”

Ray smiled. “I am. One quarter.”

“And, um—” The kid swallowed thickly, dropped his eyes. “Gay. I heard that you were gay.”

“That too.”

The kid looked up. “One quarter?”

Ray laughed. “I never did the math.”

Ray took his file to go see Crow Horse, who was currently very busy with his feet up on the desk, the brim of his hat shading his eyes.

“I don’t understand any of this,” Crow Horse said, squinting at the reports.

“ _And you make fun of my crappy Lakota,_ ” Ray said. “Here, I’ll translate.” Ray squatted to _reading over Crow Horse’s shoulder_ height. “Let’s see. They make the bullets .45’s, too, no help there. . . . They got clay off Nancy’s clothes, which might be helpful if we weren’t in the Badlands . . .” Ray frowned. “Crow Horse, what’s lignite?”

“It’s a kinda coal. Why?” Crow Horse peered at the reports. “They didn’t find lignite on her, did they?”

“They did,” Ray said. “So she had coal on her; maybe she was in some kind of factory?”

Crow Horse shook his head. “It’s shit coal, Ray; they don’t use it for industry. But you can find it in the ground.”

“So—”

“But not _here_ , Ray! There ain’t no lignite down here; there’s some in the Badlands, sure, but way up in North Dakota.”

Ray frowned at the reports, hoping the numbers would rearrange themselves into answers. When that didn’t happen, he said, “How’d she get all the way up to North Dakota without her parents noticing?”

“Maybe she didn’t, Ray. Maybe the killer was up there.”

“Why?”

“Guess he’s doing whatever he’s doing down here up there, too.”

Ray sighed. “Crossing state lines? Cuz more jurisdiction problems is what we need.”

“We’ll deal with ’em when we come to them. What else does it say?”

Ray flipped through the pages. “The skull is a human infant, five months old. It—”

Ray stopped cold, the plain black text boring into his brain.

Crow Horse nudged him. “What?”

It took Ray a moment to get his mouth to work.

“One hundred years old,” he said finally.

Crow Horse frowned. “I thought you said five months.”

“He was five months old when he died,” Ray said slowly. “But that was a hundred years ago.”

Crow Horse turned the file, hoping that a change in perspective would make things more clear. It didn’t.

“Huh,” he said, then chuckled. “I’m confused, but relieved. You know?”

The gears in Ray’s fired to action slowly. The little skull, the tools. The little double-sided hammer, the compass.

“Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Ray said.

Crow Horse blinked at him. “Huh?”

“He’s an archaeologist,” Ray said. “The killer. That’s what the tools are for, it’s why he had the skull.”

Crow Horse frowned. “What’s he after? There ain’t no treasure out here.”

“There must be,” Ray said. “He’s found something—or he thinks he can find something—so valuable that it was worth killing Nancy, and Arthur Long Jacket.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Crow Horse said. “I guess maybe that Indiana Jones shit _is_ real.”

Ray remembered something, suddenly, something Grampa had told him that he had not understood.

“Hey, Crow Horse,” he said. “What’s _pakóta_ mean?”

“ _Pakóta_? It means to dig at something, to remove it; we use it to talk about marrow, digging the marrow from the bone.”


	5. In Which Ray Takes off His Shoes, and Revisits the Mirror Desert

They spread an enlargement of Nancy’s map out over the kitchen table. Crow Horse scrounged up some magic markers while Ray requisitioned himself a snack.

Ray crunched into his apple and slid into a chair at the table.

“I hope this means something to you,” Ray said. “Cuz I’m at a loss.”

Jimmy was curled up a few feet behind Ray’s chair. Crow Horse pointed at him.

“Tripod there is the villages,” Crow Horse said. “This—” He indicated the area of the map, “—is pretty far out, on the eastern edge of the rez.”

Crow Horse uncapped one of his markers and began embellishing the map with legends and pictograph-simple illustrations.

“You got caves up here . . .”

Where Nancy had written ‘left,’ Crow Horse wrote ‘caves’ and drew some honeycombs.

“. . . here’s a plateau, Hollow Horn . . .”

Crow Horse marked it on the map, his plateau a right angle.

“. . . over here we got Mirror Valley—”

Crow Horse drew a little ‘u’ over the spot where Nancy had written ‘careful.’ Ray sat up straight.

“Mirror?” he said. “There’s a place called ‘Mirror?’”

“I just said there was, didn’t I?”

Ray thought of his visions, the white sand and the camera flash sky.

“How far is it?”

***

“Settle down, _kola_. It’s a long drive.”

Ray’s legs shook with nervous energy. He tried to stop them, then found himself tapping and flexing his hands instead. He dug through the glove compartment until he found some gum; that helped things a little.

“We don’t even know if this is gonna turn out,” Crow Horse said.

“I know,” Ray said.

He snapped his gum peevishly.

“You got a backup plan for if we don’t find anything?” Crow Horse asked.

“Maybe drive every goddamn inch of the reservation ’til we do find something.”

“We don’t have the manpower, not with the goons gone. You thinkin’ ’bout calling in Fed backup?”

“Do it myself,” Ray muttered. He ground his gum between his back molars.

Crow Horse rolled his eyes. “Yeah. There’s a failsafe.”

“Just drive,” Ray said.

Mirror Valley looked nothing like the desert of his dreams, but Ray suspected that place isn’t a place from this earth. He felt the same way, though: trancelike but determined, like he was being guided by some greater force.

“Say when you wanna stop,” Crow Horse said.

Ray nodded, not taking his eyes from the pale landscape.

They caught a familiar shape. “Stop now.”

Crow Horse saw the truck, too.

“I’ll be goddamned,” he said.

They got out of the car. Ray went to the truck, opened the driver’s side door, and started rustling around.

“No way to be sure it’s the same truck,” Crow Horse said.

“Probable cause.”

He emerged a moment later, and slammed the door shut.

“Find anything?”

“Few tools, that Indiana Jones stuff,” Ray said. “Some bullets—.45’s. A gun—a .45.”

Ray tossed the gun to Crow Horse. Then he drew his sidearm and fired into the truck’s left front tire, one clean, untelegraphed, dead perfect shot. The truck sagged to the ground, the air leaving with a pop and a gasp.

Crow Horse jumped. “Jesus, Ray! What the hell are you doing?”

“Call it insurance,” Ray said, and he sounded calmer as he reholstered his firearm.

Crow Horse sighed and locked the .45 in the cruiser.

“You might warn me next time.”

“You like me because I keep life interesting,” Ray said, and damned if he didn’t sound positively upbeat. “Let’s arrest this son of a bitch.”

Ray and Crow Horse walked the dunes.

“He prob’ly heard that shot,” Crow Horse said. “He coulda ran.”

“Fine,” Ray said sharply. “He can run out into the desert, and be tried by the coyote court. That’s fine by me.”

Ray was beginning to become frustrated that they saw no signs of their unsub—the prairie was flat, and you could see for miles in the desert. And then he understood why, as he and Crow Horse came to the mouth of a great basin.

“That’d be the valley part, huh?” Ray asked.

They peered over the edge. At first, Ray was so shocked that his hands could not work to raise his weapon.

“What the hell is this?” Crow Horse said.

The soundess returned to Ray’s flesh. He drew his gun, and began to slowly step down the hill to the valley below, eyes and barrel aimed at the man at the bottom. He was white, bespectacled; maybe it was the desert dust, but the man’s hair, skin, and clothes all appeared the same color, an indifferent beige.

“Police,” Ray said. “Put down the tools, and put your fucking hands up.”

The man did so in a cursory way, dropping the tools and then raising his hands so they hovered before his shoulders as if affixed there.

“There’s been some mistake, officer,” he said. “I’m conducting an anthropological—”

“Shut up,” Ray said.

He had reached the bottom of the valley; he and the unsub were now on equal footing, literally. Ray held his bead on the man as Crow Horse made it down the hill, patted him down.

Crow Horse flipped open the man’s wallet. “Andre Jackson, fifty, resident of Chicago, Illinois.”

“Long way from home, Andre,” Ray said.

“I’m—”

“You wanna tell us what the fuck is going on here?” Ray asked.

There was an eight-by-twelve foot plot, like the grave for some enormous being, where the prairie soil had been removed. At the bottom, the unmistakable shape of human skulls and long bones grinned out from the earth.

“Like I said,” Jackson said. “I’m conducting an anthropological study.”

“Grave robbing’s a college education now?” Crow Horse asked.

“How about killing little girls?” Ray asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

Crow Horse laughed. “Sorry, chief!”

“But the correct answer is, ‘I want a lawyer,’” Ray finished.

The man frowned. He looked at Crow Horse, at Ray’s barely contained fury and the blinding mirror shine of his gun.

“Look,” Jackson said. “You guys are from the reservation, right? I’m sure you get paid shit. Look, there’s a lot of money—”

Ray’s lip curved in disgust. He lowered his weapon.

“Walter,” he said.

Crow Horse took out his cuffs.

“Mr. Jackson,” he said. “Welcome to Indian Country! You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an expensive _Wasi’chu_ attorney. If you cannot afford a flash big city lawyer, we’ll call up Rapid City and have them send you down one of their best public defenders . . .”

Crow Horse began to lead Jackson up the hill. Ray watched after them a moment, then walked to the edge of the plot. The “anthropological study.” He looked down, into the eerie grins, the sightless eyes staring for him.

***

Crow Horse shoved Jackson into the back of the cruiser while Ray radioed for backup to help process the scene.

“You wanna stay here and wait for them, or take him in?” Crow Horse asked.

Ray recognized this as a concession to ordering him off Nancy’s case. He really did want to take Jackson to the station, to hear him answer for the horrible things he’d done. But Ray knew that it would just make him angrier; they could never answer the only question he really cared about. How could you do this? How could anything be worth ending a life?

“I’ll stay,” Ray said.

He would be better working. He was sure he or Jackson or both wouldn’t make it through the interview if Crow Horse weren’t there to supervise. Hell, they might not even make it through the ride to the station.

It was a long ride.

Crow Horse studied Ray’s face for a long moment, then nodded. He squeezed Ray’s shoulder.

“Be good,” he said.

The cruiser kicked up a cloud of dust, and Crow Horse waved as the car grew smaller and smaller. Ray waited until they were a tiny white dot running to meet the horizon, then turned and went to work processing the truck.

***

The sky was darkening when Danny drove Ray back to the station. Ray felt exhausted, but accomplished; they had found blood in the truck, enough to type, and they had the gun. It would be over.

Ray found Crow Horse in his office. He had the lights off, his feet up on his desk, and his hat shading his eyes.

Ray turned the lights on. “Waiting up for me?”

Crow Horse righted his hat and blinked until his eyes were used to the harsh light.

“Nope,” he said.

“How long you been out of interview?”

“Hour or so.”

Ray nodded, and took a seat. “So you just thought you’d nap here. It’d be more convenient than sleeping at home, in an actual bed.”

“Yup.”

“Okay. What’d he say?”

Crow Horse groaned. “You won’t believe it.”

“Try me.”

Crow Horse leaned back in his chair, folding his arms behind his head.

“Our friend Mr. Jackson has been making a pretty penny mining the Badlands for buried treasure.”

Ray frowned. “You said there’s no treasure out here—”

“I have been enlightened. Apparently, he’s been selling off genuine Indian artifacts to museums at thousands of dollars a pop.”

“Artifacts? What—” It dawned on him. “The bones?”

“That’s right. Perk up there, Ray; when I die, you can trade me to a museum for a few grand.”

Ray felt sick. He thought of emergency airplane procedures—when were you supposed to put your head between your knees? And when did you just try to breathe normally?

“He killed two people. For that. Why?”

“Looks like Nancy and Arthur both helped him find his way around the rez; when he’d gotten his bearings, he decided to tie up the loose ends. Afraid they’d tell somebody; apparently Arthur kept bothering him for money. Found him all over the rez, everywhere he went.”

“That’s what happens when you hire a tracker. They can track you.” Ray shook his head. “Jesus.”

Crow Horse swung his feet off the desk, stood.

“You wanna call Rapid City, arrange for pickup?”

Ray followed him to the door. “Can it wait ’til we get home? I just . . . I need a minute.”

Crow Horse rested his hand between Ray’s shoulder blades, gently led him out.

“Sure, Ray. It’ll keep.”

***

“We’re here to pick up your garbage.”

“Take him,” Ray said. “I like not being involved in this part, I really do.”

Special Agent Martin avoided eye contact with Ray while they filled out the necessary paperwork and brought Jackson out of his cell. In an uncharacteristic show of intelligence, he also said very little.

“What about the evidence?” Ray said.

“We’re keeping it for trial,” Martin said. “You know the drill.”

“And then? What about the bones? How do we get them back?”

Martin looked at him for a long time before replying.

“You don’t, Levoi,” he said finally. “They’re property of the museums they were sold to.”

“Bullshit!” Ray said.

“Ray,” Crow Horse said.

“That’s stolen property,” Ray said. “Since when does stolen property revert to the fence?”

“They’re nobody’s property,” Martin said. “They’re historical artifacts; they belong to the museums. Sorry, Levoi.”

And damned if he didn’t actually look it. That in no way tempered Ray’s anger, however; he stormed back to Crow Horse’s office before the prisoner transfer was finished, unable to keep looking at Martin or Jackson or anyone else.

Walter stopped Ray before he punched another hole in a wall, taking him by the shoulders, holding him still and limiting his movement.

Under Crow Horse’s firm grip, the fight went out of Ray’s flesh.

“It’s not fair,” he said.

Crow Horse nodded. “I know.”

“They’re—he stole people’s family members from holy land, and—”

“I know, Ray.”

“—and just because they’re Indian, they’re _artifacts_ now. How does a hundred years turn something from someone’s family to an artifact?”

“It doesn’t make any sense, Ray. But you win some, you lose some.”

Ray wilted. “Great. Thanks, Crow Horse. I feel so much better now.”

He broke free from Crow Horse’s grasp, but Crow Horse kept after him, following Ray as he collapsed into his desk chair. Crow Horse sat on the edge of the desk, inches away. Ray looked up at him moodily.

“I’m trying to wallow, here,” he said.

“So you’re thinkin’, what good did we do? What’d it matter?”

“Yes,” Ray said softly.

“We caught the guy who killed Arthur Long Jacket and Nancy Dull Knife, Ray. He’s going to go to jail, and we’re gonna get to go tell that to their families.”

Ray relented, the anger going out of him with a sigh.

“I know that,” he said finally.

Walter just looked at him. Not speaking, only watching.

“But I probably needed to be reminded,” Ray said. “Thanks.”

Crow Horse slid off the desk, started for the door. “Come on, _kola_ ; let’s go do our notifying, and then we can go home and pack. You decide where you wanna go on vacation?”

Ray followed him. “If we go out east, do we have to stay with my parents?”

“What, you wanna throw away money on a hotel when we got family in town?”

***

 _The sky was robin’s egg blue, and it went on forever. So strange to be above the horizon._

Below him, the stainless steel skeleton of the nascent high rise stretched for miles. You need to go up on the mountain and get yourself focused. _He was higher than the mountain, and true to Grampa’s word, Ray felt like he was seeing clear._

“Hey, wasi _. You can’t stand that close to the edge like that. You’ll fall. Shoes make you fall.”_

Ray turned to look. His father was coming up the rails behind him, coming to stand with him at the edge, looking out.

Ray sat down, and began removing his shoes.

“Why’s it work like that?” Ray asked. “Why won’t I fall if I take my shoes off?”

Ray’s father’s bare feet settled beside him.

“You know,” he said, “it’s about feeling the connection to the building. You’re always safer, you feel a connection to something.”

Ray set his shoes and socks on the platform, went to stand. His father extended a hand, and Ray let the man help him to his feet.

The beams were warm from the sun, and his father was right; Ray felt connected, grounded, in a way he hadn’t before. The metal was telling him things about itself, things about the building. Just by feel he understood a different way of walking, how to step so as not to fall.

Ray’s father looked him up and down, smiling.

“You grew up good,” he said. “Taller ’an me. You get that from your ma.” He indicated the wide-open sky surrounding them. “You okay up here?”

“Yeah,” Ray said. “I’ve never been afraid of heights.”

“You get that from me. Indians aren’t afraid of heights.”

“Why not?”

Ray’s father shrugged. “I dunno. Why be afraid of being high up? That’s like being afraid of the water, or being alone outside at night.”

“You know, Wasi’chu _people are scared of that stuff, too.”_

“They got too much time on their hands.”

“Dad, how come you never taught me any of that stuff? About being a Sioux?”

Ray’s father looked out into the endless sky. So strange to be above the horizon.

“Glad you’re doin’ good, wasi _,” he said. “A man worries about his son. Even a dead man.”_

Ray sighed. Three years on the rez and he still hadn’t figured out how to get a straight answer.

“Why did you call me that?” he asked. “Maggie thought it was because I was chubby, but I wasn’t. I never was.” He paused, studied his father’s face, the man’s dark eyes tracking the clouds drifting away, a lazy hunter. “You know, I’m learning Lakota. I know that wasi _is part of_ Wasi’chu _. Is that why you called me that? Cuz I was mostly white?”_

“You know what that means?” Ray’s father asked. “Wasi’chu _? Not how we use it; just what the words mean.”_

“‘Takes the fat,’” Ray said.

“Good boy. You know why they take the fat? Nowadays, it’s all low fat this, calories that. But used to be, when you couldn’t just get meat from a drive through, the fat was the best part. It was the richest; it had the most in it, all kindsa energy packed inside it. But white people . . . they don’t even know that. Maybe think the fat’s nothing special. But they take it anyway, and they swallow it up, just cuz they’re used to taking. It’s just their way. Makes me sad, thinkin’ they take something special, don’t even know it’s special.”

Ray’s father turned his eyes from the clouds to his son.

“Thanks,” Ray said.

Ray’s father shrugged. “What for? We’re just talkin’.”

Ray nodded. “Yeah, sure.” Little gusts of wind flew up the high rise from lands God knew how far away. Ray shivered, and wrapped his arms around himself. “I’m really sorry I didn’t get to know you.”

“Eyah. Sorry I had to leave.”

Ray frowned. “You didn’t leave, you—”

Ray’s father eyes on him were unpitying. “Was there one day, next day I wasn’t? How’d I get gone, except to leave?”

“Yeah, you’re right, I guess. I just meant . . . I guess I always thought you didn’t mean to leave. That you wouldn’t have left us on purpose.”

His father shrugged. “Life’s all choices, Ray.”

Tears burned at Ray’s eyes, and he felt stupid and childish and used. He turned his face away.

“You got a new family now, though,” his father said. “Prob’ly you should choose to focus on that, instead of what you lost.”

Ray laughed harshly. “Mom and the Colonel? Yeah, they’ve—”

Ray’s father shook his head. “Nah. I meant your boyfriend—”

Ray laughed again. “Crow Horse? He’s not my—well, okay, maybe he is, but . . . we’re not family.”

“No? You care about him, put up with him even when he’s a pain in the ass?”

Ray was fast losing the focus coming up on the high rise had given him. His brain was clumsy, and his mouth clumsier still.

“Well, yes,” he said finally. “I mean, I—I guess I _think of_ him _that way, but he—he doesn’t . . .”_

“Family goes both ways,” Ray’s father said. “You think cuz he’s got people already, you’re not family?”

That was, in fact, exactly what Ray had thought.

“It’s—it’s a blood thing,” Ray said.

“I dunno, wasi _. I know I’m your dad, but I’m kinda on his side for this.”_

“That some things matter more?”

“Yeah, that. And that you’re stupid sometimes.”

Ray frowned. “Thanks.”

Ray’s father shrugged. “I dunno. I think maybe you’re spendin’ too much time lookin’ for problems, instead of workin’ on the good you got.”

“I was raised Wasi’chu _. I’m still learning. Gimme a break.”_

“Okay. Here’s some fatherly advice: take your hasanni _, and keep him. Make a family.”_

“You’re not trying to get us to have kids, too, are you?” Ray asked.

“Nah. I wouldn’t take my advice on that, anyhow. But I know when something’s valuable, and I know that the Wasi’chu _got it all wrong, looking for things to be afraid of instead of finding things to love.”_

“Thanks, Dad. Hey, I don’t know that word, hasanni _. What’s it mean?”_

“You know, I know you got some guff from your stepdad, but Sioux, we always thought winktje _were a part of the whole, you know? Wuzzat song—fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly? World’s made up of a lotta different kinds of people.”_

Three years on the rez and Ray still hadn’t figured out how to get a straight answer.

“Thanks, Dad,” he said instead.

***

Ray woke easy. He was planning on just falling back to sleep when Crow Horse’s arm tightened around him.

“You okay?” he asked. “You were talkin’ in your sleep.”

Ray turned to face him. “I say anything interesting?”

“Do you ever?”

Ray wet his lips. He went long enough without responding that Crow Horse asked, “A vision, or just a dream?”

“I don’t know,” Ray said. “I think it was a vision. But I don’t think I’m ’sposed to do anything; I think it was just for me to see.”

“No murder and mayhem?”

“No.”

“Nice change of pace,” Walter said.

“Yeah,” Ray said. He studied the familiar planes of Crow Horse’s face, the slightly less familiar expression—gentle concern—and added, fondly, “ _Hasanni_.”

Crow Horse smiled. “Your Lakota’s comin’ along.”

“I learned it in my dream.”

“Your visions come with vocabulary quizzes now?” Crow Horse asked.

Ray shrugged.

Crow Horse slanted a sly look at him. “What do you think that means, _hasanni_?”

“I thought—he said it was a word for you. Like ‘boyfriend.’”

Crow Horse laughed.

Ray sighed. “That’s not what it means, is it? Dammit, he’s always doing this to me—” Crow Horse creased his brow, but Ray just shook it off. “Never mind. What’s it really mean?”

“More like ‘partner.’ But it can also mean ‘spouse.’”

“So . . . like a family partnership,” Ray said.

“Yeah,” Crow Horse said. “Someone you can count on; someone who’s always got your back.”

Ray tried to keep a tight leash on his smile, but it proved too strong for him.

“Sounds about right,” he said, “ _hasanni_.” He paused. “There’s no chance you’ll let me live down calling you my boyfriend, right?”

Crow Horse shook his head solemnly. “None whatsoever, no.”

Ray smiled.

“I’ll take it,” he said.


End file.
